Ten million dollars a month rent.

HughesJust did an interview on Federal News Radio with Tony Bardo from Hughes.  “Fun facts” are a part of the radio interview, but when Tony estimated the number of T-1 lines that the federal government pays each month I was astounded.

listen here: http://bit.ly/A4wbpJ

Some estimates show the federal government has over 25,000 T-1 lines at an average of $400 each.   Now, it doesn’t take a genius to multiply out (25,000 * 400) and get ten million dollars A MONTH!  Whew.

Van Roekel can talk about cloud first, future first, or share first – if the solution involves the cloud, the answer will have to travel through a pipe.  If an agency can get control of charges for its communications, then it can control a lot.

Tony’s response to the Nerdometer questions:

1 Year of your first computer 1988 5
2 Year of your first cell phone 1986 10
3 What is your Twitter feed? no 0
4 What is the title of your blog? no 0
5 What do you use for online personal backup? no 0
6 Flavor of smartphone? iPhone 10
7 Number of apps? 20 5
8 What kind of a tablet device do you own? iPad 10
9 What social networking sites do you participate in? FB LI 10
10 The last book you read . . . Paper or electronic? Paper 0
Score 50
Rank Hipster wannabe

 

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predictive analytics applied to the data center – Netuitive

netuitiveThis week’s interview takes predictive analytics and turns them on managing virtual systems.

Listen here:  http://bit.ly/sXKJ6a(60 mintues)

When most listeners hear the term “predictive analytics” they think of systems that use statistical modeling in the finance or insurance.  Today’s interview takes the ability to collect data from systems and make predictions as to reliability of the systems themselves – everything from ability to scale to serious downtime issues. Netuitive takes the basic concept and applies analytics to the physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure. 

Netuitve has a set of patented algorithms that work in the area of application performance, cloud management, and virtualization optimization.  This field is perhaps the next step in moving to the cloud.  If an agency has several application that are integrated into a cloud system, it is important to be able to manage the operation of each system in the cloud.  When you make a move to the cloud, you get a fluid structure and, along with that, you get the challenge of all systems interoperating together in an efficient manner.  The offering from Netuitive will give you a visualization of the status of the system.

Federal IT professionals should know about this technology because it has been successfully managed a massive private cloud of 130,000 virtual machines.  If you are looking at coordinating all aspects of big data, then you should listen to this interview.

Tags:  Virtualization management, Predictive analytics, application performance management (APM), Virtual data center, IT analytics, Behavior Learning technology, Self-learning technology, IT Operational Analytics, Netuitive

 

 

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let’s go old school – and save money — Cobol & Microfocus

Listen here: http://bit.ly/trzf7Y  (60 minutes)

When most listeners hear the term “Cobol” they think of computing done with paper cards in huge rooms with raised floors.

That’s IF they have even heard of Cobol.

However, they may not realize that 90% of all daily financial transactions take place in a Cobol environment.

On today’s show, Tod Tompkins from Microfocuswill discuss how agencies take a look at applications in Cobol and migrate to other areas, perhaps other systems or even to the cloud.

He makes a compelling argument that these kind of projects can pay for themselves in the first year.

The recent federal debt ceiling and budget debate accentuated and highlighted pressures across government.

Every agency will face the inevitable challenge of significant budget cuts in information technology (IT) and the systems/programs IT supports.

There are approaches, however, for reducing spending and eliminating the need for future debt ceiling increases, not in terms of launching new and complex IT programs, but refining and re-hosting current legacy systems.

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How to overcome problems with big data: Hadoop

GCE Federal LOGO

This week’s interview is with Ray Muslimani, President of GCE Federal

Listen here:  http://bit.ly/pOLtLU

Summary: Big data doesn’t necessarily mean big headaches.

Let’s outline the problem – if you combine data from mobile devices, RFID, aerial sensing, software logs, and social media information you can crush a typical analyst.  Furthermore, information can reside in secure silos and proprietary data stores.  The challenge for federal IT professionals is to derive deep insights from this proliferation of information.

GCE Federal has earned its stripes helping federal agencies in financial areas.  With the advent of massive amounts of data being generated, GCE Federal has developed an expertise I handling what is now called “Big Data.” President Ray Muslimani give a good technical overview of a technology called Hatoop. 

Hadoop originated in 2006 as an outgrowth of the open source Apache Project.  It can give you a way to manage terabytes of information.  James Kobelius from Forester writes that “Hadoop will be the nucleus of next-generation data warehouses.”

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mymedicare.gov – the project manager interview

Center for Medicaid & Medicare

Today’s interview is with Jon Booth, the program manager for mymedicare.gov

Listen here    http://bit.ly/oVV4Ym    (60 minutes)

Summary:

Here’s the challenge:  give citizens information on health records. Here’s the solution:  mymedicare.gov  Listen and learn how the website was designed, tested, and released.  Today’s interview with Jon Booth, Director of Web and New Media services at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

                There are an estimated 47 million Medicare beneficiaries.  The CMS was given a directive to design a web site to serve citizens with increased ability to access the status of adjudicated claims, view claim status, view eligibility and much more.  John Booth gives a description of what happened when the task was dropped on his desk.  He articulates the concerns of gathering data and making sure it was secure. 

                During this interview, Jon gives a crystal clear definition of patient portal and commercial offerings.  The discussion includes observations on offerings from Google and Microsoft’s health vault.  In the next few years, electronic health records (EHR)  will be compared with personal health records (PHR) —Jon Booth puts both in perspective for the federal IT professional as well as the end user as well.

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