Recently in Hyperconnectivity Category

This is my last blog posting, two years to the day and 160+ postings after entering the blogsphere, and six months after retiring from Nortel, where I worked for 37 years. I left out the front door, but was saddened to leave a company that had entered bankruptcy and was being sold off.

Having my own blog been fun and quite a learning experience!

Throughout I tried to educate, entertain and promote Nortel's cause in this exciting new medium.

The theme of the blog was Hyperconnectivity, a megatrend whereby everyone and everything that could benefit from being connected will be connected; or more succinctly the "exploding network of people, computing and things".

Education came in many forms. For example, most recently I talked to new applications enabled through the Internet of things. But I have talked a lot about UC and social networking, and exciting new solutions such as Web.alive.

Entertainment took many forms. Take a look at the posts on virtual sailing around the world, http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/green-it/think-green-on-st-pattys-day.asp and missing links.

Promoting Nortel's cause on the blogsphere was somewhat of an experiment. While being in the CTO office, I got closely linked with a new marketing push we had in leveraging social networking. While there were numerous Nortel blogs such as Buzzboard, mine was the only one not on a Nortel site (providing some unique opportunities).

Worked pretty well, even though we were all learning. For example, at one point, 3 of the top 4 stories on an Brad Reese's Cisco blog (including one on Cisco's Nexus launch) were about Nortel- a strong demonstration of the value of social networking when tightly linked to marketing strategies. Another example was promoting Nortel's leadership in energy efficient networking, a very important differentiator against Cisco.

My thanks Rich Tehtrani (a very prolific blogger himself) and his TMCnet team for giving me the opportunity to blog on their site and to write a column for over ten years..

Thanks to you my readers and godspeed to all, particularly to my co-workers at Nortel many of whom are losing or have lost their jobs, or continue to work in a stressful environment.

And here's to the Hyperconnected Enterprise, a concept that is increasingly being realized across an ever-broader range of of business applications, encompassing mobile people, computing AND connected things.

Tony

PS Check out the archives button above or the categories on the far right to take a look at past postings.

Great set of articles crossed my desk on connecting a broad range of sensors in various forms.

We've all heard about and probably used toll-collection tags, security access key cards and retail tags, but many new apps are coming our way.

For example,
How about the first WiFi pacemaker that allows the doctor to monitor its performance? Could be life saving.

How about RFI-embedded poker chips that allow the casino to track winnings? The table always wins in the long run.

How about an app that tracks thousands of GPS-enabled cell phones, analyzes the data and returns traffic reports? Anything that helps me waste less time the better.

How about RFID tagged tools that warn you if you don't return all tools to your truck before you leave a work site? Not having the tool you need when you need it costs time and money.

By 2014, ABI Research estimates that the business of new apps willalmost be as big as the business of traditional apps.

Very exciting prospects for Hyperconnectivity!

Certainly not.

But Larry Roberts, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, says that the Internet, the underlying fabric of Hyperconnectivity, is.

He suggests that traditional routers, such as those from Cisco and Juniper, just don't have the price/performance required to support Hyperconnectivity, the "exploding network of people, computing and things" (my term).

Larry suggests that you need flow-based routing to solve the problem, basically bringing back virtual circuits (introduced back in the mid-70s) to the packet world (and also visible in label switching or MPLS). The difference lies in leveraging the inherent flow-based nature of Internet traffic.

Larry's gone off and started another company, called Anagran, to deliver what he thinks is needed.

What has always amazed me about Larry is the ability to converge technology and business ideas in his head? Maybe he's on to something.

In the meantime, we can only hope that the Internet, faced with explosive growth in video and addressing, is not at the edge of its demise (a prediction that has come up every decade or so, fortunately to no avail).

Hyperconnectivity depends on it!

How about an on-line database of 2500, correction 250,000, medieval soldiers from the 14 and 15 century Britain.

There you can find that "Robert Fishlake served on three successive expeditions in 1378, 1379 and 1380, presumably in each case as an archer, before going on to give further service in Scotland and elsewhere, showing that archers might be just as professional in attitude and outlook as knights and esquires."

Fascinating stuff.

With only 5% of music downloads resulting in any cash exchange, copyright owners (artists, musicians, record studios and so on) are rightfully concerned.

But what to do? The French Government is taking a rather unique approach.

In France, there has been a raging debate over what is called the proposed 'three strikes law', whereby any Internet user observed as undertaking what are deemed illegal file transfers would be disconnected (on the third incident), UNILATERALLY. Interesting that a baseball analogy is being applied in a country obsessed with European football, sailing and everything but!

But a recent constitutional ruling states that, "under the 1789 (French) Declaration of the Rights of Man, only a judge should have the power to disconnect individuals from the Internet".

So French plans are being debated further.

Whether this flies or not, this is a serious challenge for lawmakers, with many cultural institutions at risk.

One good outcome to-date- Hyperconnectivity has been accepted a a constitutional right, at least in France.

Blogger Yoani Sanchez, 32, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

The catch is that she runs her blog by mail, and never sees what she writes! You see she lives in Cuba where connectivity is very limited and blogging not encouraged (to say the least) by the current government. Her audience spans the globe but excludes Cuba.

Being hyperconnected sometimes requires extreme measures!

Google's My Location service allows you to search for "pizza take-outs" nearby without having to enter a specific location. It uses any information that would help, including GPS, WiFi AP's and IP addresses.

But it can go well beyond that!

In the future, will personal tracking become a requirement from your employer, insurance company, bank or whatever?

For example, your employer may want to know that the company car is only being used for business; or your car insurance rate may be dependent on not driving to work every day; or your bank may want to know where you are to avoid fraudulent use of your credit card. The list goes on.

Will Hyperconnectivity become a life requirement?

But you thought it was only for people.

Well now you can use Twitter to track activity at the Tower Bridge in London.

For example, you could get a message such as
"I am opening for the MV Dixie Queen, which is passing downstream."

How about a Twitter message when your garage door is opened?

Seems like a Twitter world of endless possibilities.

We think of social networking and we think of Facebook, Wikis and the like.

But should Twitter be on this list.

I think not as it has seen little uptake as an interactive medium..

What Twitter has evolved into is a powerful new broadcast medium, whether used to track Hollywood celebrity reactions to Michael Jackson's death or what's really happening in Iran.

That was Coke's slogan back in the 70s.

With 1.6B consumer servings per day, Coca-Cola is always looking for new ways to serve their customers.

Enter Freestyle Coke, a hyperconnected vending machine that can give you 100 drink choices, while giving Coke better on-line inventory control and first hand market research.

How? By embedding 30 flavor cartridges (example that come to mind: caffiene, sugar, fruits) that network back to HQ.

Is a hamburger dispenser next?