Latest News from Bob Gourley

How Platfora Is Transforming Hadoop

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:15:00 EDT

When talking with the less-technical people in your enterprise, which may include end users and many others on the leadership team, it always pays to have non technical expressions to describe new capabilities. Here are some thoughts on Platfora that may be of use in discussions like that.

Fixmo Launches Industry’s First Mobile Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) Solution for Microsoft SharePoint

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:00:14 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Fixmo SharePlace Delivers Integrated Mobile Security and DLP for Microsoft SharePoint; Supports Mobile-Specific Access Control Policies TORONTO & STERLING, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Fixmo, a leading provider of mobile security and risk management solutions, today announced the availability of Fixmo SharePlace, the first defense-grade data leakage prevention (DLP) solution enabling secure and compliant access to Microsoft SharePoint from Apple [...]

DI2E Plugfest and Mashup Shaping Up To Be An Incredible Event For Disruptive IT Firms and Mission Focused Technologists Serving DoD Missions

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:05:55 EDT

By Bob Gourley

We previously provided information on the DI2E Pluggest and Mashup event being coordinated by some forward thinking, mission-focused government thought leaders and friends at the Association for Enterprise Technology (AFEI). The event will be held Monday 20 May at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia. We liked the approach when we first heard of it [...]

Innovate, Deliver, Protect and Analyze, the Path to Ideal IT

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:36:50 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Steven VanRoekel gave an excellent keynote on Wednesday at the FOSE conference. Mr VanRoekel is a former Microsoft executive who has been in the Federal Government since 2009. He outlined the steps that he is pushing as the Federal CIO to improve IT throughout the government. He highlighted the pervasiveness of mobile technology, and how [...]

GovTek Awards Need Your Input: You can help recognize a tech champion

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:29:53 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Friends at the Government Technology Research Alliance have an awards activity they call the GovTek Awards. They seek community input and then provide awards in categories designed to highlight contributions in many key federal IT disciplines. You can check out the 2012 winners here. It is time to vote for their 2013 awards activity. Do [...]

Cloud Computing and DoD

Wed, 15 May 2013 03:00:00 EDT

By Bob Gourley

You don’t have to convince government IT leaders of the smart new business models, efficiencies and performance enhancements available with cloud computing. Like IT professionals everywhere, federal technologists get it. But things are different in the federal community for many reasons. One is the way the nation governs IT, which flows directly from our Constitution [...]

Northrop Grumman Joins Department of Homeland Security Program to Bolster Cyber Protections for U.S. Critical Infrastructure

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:49:34 EDT

By Bob Gourley

My friends (and former employers) at Northrop Grumman just announced they have signed a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designed to enhance cybersecurity protections of the nation’s critical infrastructure. This is associated with the DHS’s Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS) program. The following is from the Northrop Grumman press release: FALLS [...]

Liquid Robotics: An update on this particularly virtuous technology– and a request for your input

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:48:31 EDT

By Bob Gourley

It has been a while since we have written about our friends at Liquid Robotics. We imagine most of our readers are keeping their ears open for news on their capabilities, they are so widely known in tech circles just about everyone knows their basic approach of leveraging “Wave Gilders” as wave propelled robotic platforms [...]

Lessons in Leadership from General Stanley McChrystal

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:47:50 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

The opening keynote at this year’s FOSE conference was delivered by General Stanley McChrystal. General McChrystal was formerly the Commander of International Security Assistance Force as well the United States Forces in Afghanistan. General McChrystal has also commanded the Joint Special Operations Command and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He recently retired from the US Army, [...]

Please Help Me Find Federal Sales Leaders for High Tech/Disruptive Firms

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:41:02 EDT

By Bob Gourley

I am in a hard spot. I hear all the times from CEOs of some of the greatest tech firms in the nation that they need high quality sales professionals with federal sales experience and everyone I know that has those skills is busy and very happy where they are at. I sure would appreciate [...]

Would you like the truth about the NSA? Watch this one minute video

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:03:52 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Everyone in the national security establishment knows of NSA’s Deputy Director, John C Inglis. He is without a doubt one of the most professional, competent, courageous leaders in the federal government. Like the vast majority of government servants he also has a strong sense of ethics and is always honest. All who know him realize he is [...]

CloudCentral Announces Availability of PaaS, Powered by CumuLogic

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:21:31 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Web and Global 2000 enterprises can now accelerate cloud adoption by leveraging the power of Database-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and much more with CloudCentral’s new Cloud Services Portfolio. Canberra, Australia and Santa Clara, Calif. – May 13, 2013 – CloudCentral, an Australian based leading provider of cloud infrastructure services, and CumuLogic, the leading innovator in cloud platform technologies, today [...]

Carahsoft Sponsors 15 May Webinar with Josh Wills of Cloudera

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:38:58 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Training a New Generation of Data Scientists Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 Time: 2pm Eastern; 11am Pacific Duration: 1 Hour Data scientists, the professionals who straddle the line between statistician and software engineer, are in demand like never before. This scarcity of talent drives organizations and agencies to ensure that their data scientists focus on building the tools to [...]

A Game-Changer in the Big Data Field: Platfora

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:00:00 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Platfora is enterprise grade technology that brings the power of Hadoop to any analyst that needs to get value from data. They are a game-changer in the Big Data field. But one of the best things about Platfora is it is incredibly easy to understand what they do and what sets them apart from others. [...]

Triumfant Launches its First Monitored Service Solution for Advanced Malware Detection and Remediation

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:09:03 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Editor’s note: I have meant to get our readers an update on Triumfant for quite a while. I am very proud to be an advisor to John Prisco and believe their approach to automatically discovering attacks (and even misuse) on computers is one every enterprise should evaluate. The news below makes it even easier to [...]

DOD confirms China’s cyberwar strategy, White House unveils open data policy and more

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:59:20 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top cyber news and stories of the day. Department of Labor website hack highlights advanced attack trends – The recent attack at the Department of Labor is bringing to the forefront advanced tactics and strategies of cyber adversaries. This attack was a 0-day exploit of Internet Explorer 8, and allowed the attacker [...]

Seeking Sales and Technology Professionals Focused on Federal Technology Success

Fri, 10 May 2013 03:00:48 EDT

By Bob Gourley

We focus most of our writings here on the technology community in and around the Washington DC area. This is our base and you readers are our the community we most want to serve with information. We have been in the tech community for years and over time have established broad networks and are frequently [...]

DISA Keeps Moving Forward on Mobility Solutions

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:32:15 EDT

By Bob Gourley

DISA has just made an announcment regarding mobility I believe will be of high interest throughout the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community but also with the systems integrators that bring together solutions to serve the federal market. The announcement provides information on implementation guides for both Blackberry and Samsung Knox devices. Samsung Knox is [...]

Don’t forget to register for FOSE 2013

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:21:26 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

FOSE is the nation’s premier event for government technology professionals who need tools, resources, and best practices to transition to the cloud, mitigate cybersecurity threats, and achieve the goals of the DGS while managing uncertainty and the critical need to make it all happen on-time and on-budget. “The heavy impact of sequestration and across the [...]

Navy’s Information Dominance Industry Day at the TASC Heritage Conference Center in Chantilly, VA – 8 May

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:32:03 EDT

By ChrisScott

On 8 May 2013 over 400 lucky defense contractors were treated to a sold-out full agenda from the Navy as they briefed their Information Dominance programs. This is the fourth year that Navy has done this and it is an outstanding forum! All the senior IT Navy leadership arrived early, mingled with the audience, stayed late [...]

A Weekend with Facebook Home

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:02:58 EDT

By Kimberly Kelly

Facebook has grown from a small collegiate only social network site to a public one with an astounding 1.1 billion users today. Facebook has cornered the social media market, for the most part, and it doesn’t look like they are stopping there. We are now a part the internet age a where all kinds of [...]

Google lets iOS apps direct users to Chrome instead of Safari, Apple is ‘Bleeding Marketshare’ and more

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:16:33 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top mobile news and stories of the day. Google lets iOS apps direct users to Chrome instead of Safari - iOS is notoriously locked down. Unlike Android, users cannot choose the default app for certain actions (writing mail, web browsing or mapping). Google has set their own apps to auto send to Google [...]

GSA pilot program revolutionizes the personal office, Malware now spreads mostly through tainted websites and more

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:43:12 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top cyber news and stories of the day. GSA pilot program revolutionizes the personal office – The GSA is using hoteling to allow employees to reserve office space when they need it. Users can reserve conference rooms, cubicles or group work spaces. GSA is implementing hoteling to maximize the usage rate of [...]

Noted CTOs Chris Biow and Vin Sharma Present Webinar on Success With Hadoop

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:20:22 EDT

By Bob Gourley

On Thursday 9 May 2013 two technologists I deeply respect will be providing a webinar (sponsored by Carahsoft) on achieving enterprise success with Hadoop. The following is from the event announcement. Achieving Real Success with Hadoop Although Hadoop shows great promise for managing Big Data, many organizations are still struggling to decide which parts of [...]

A guide to Rooting your Android phone

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:24:02 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

One of the constant discussions between Android users is why/if you should “root.” Rooting is a term that describes the ability to grant programs “superuser” access. This allows programs to operate at the root level of the operating system, enabling full phone backups, changing certain parameters (CPU/GPU speeds) and changing the entire operating system. While [...]

After Boston: Terrorism and the Technology Gap

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:07:11 EDT

By Bryan Ware

The Boston Marathon bombing, subsequent manhunt and current investigation are unprecedented – not only due to the nature of the attack but because of how much information has been available to law enforcement, the public and the suspects. Unlike any previous large-scale attack, data came in at a staggering velocity within seconds of the twin [...]

Invincea: An update for the enterprise technology professional

Mon, 06 May 2013 07:51:16 EDT

By Bob Gourley

For disclosure: I am on the Invincea advisory board. I’m incredibly proud of to be associated with those guys and I’m hoping my pleasure with them comes through in this post. Invincea delivers an enterprise grade breach prevention platform. Capabilities they field include an ability to run software in a totally virtualized environment so key [...]

Tech Trends To Watch In May 2013

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:43:37 EDT

By Bob Gourley

The following is the meat from our monthly tech trends report. You can have this delivered to your email each month by visiting our newsletter signup page. Over the last several months we continued to see foundations being established for dramatic positive change in the federal IT ecosystem including the government contracting community. We say [...]

Feds Look to Partner With States on Cybersecurity, What keeps federal CIOs up at night and more

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:37:37 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top cyber news and stories of the day. USAID releases open data tools to increase government openness – “The U.S. Agency for International Development announced April 29 the launch of a plethora of new datasets and tools to increase transparency.” “At the conference, USAID announced the launch of usaid.gov/developer — its application [...]

A look at the Mobile Landscape in May 2013

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:15:20 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Todays’ mobile landscape is filled with a vast number of options to the uninitiated. But careful examination can easily whittle down the number of options to just a few phones. But here’s the brutal truth; now is just not a good time to buy a phone. In a few months it will be different, but that [...]

Why we need to reconsider how we do technical presentations

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:06:30 EDT

By Dirk Haun

Technical presentations aren’t TED talks. With all the facts and figures that you have to present, it’s impossible to make them exciting. Besides, the audience expects to see all those technical details and will frown upon slides that only show photos. Right? No, of course not. The perceived lack of actual content is a common [...]

Using Storify and Vine to Capture Gist of HP’s Government Software Summit

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:33:56 EDT

By Bob Gourley

A big part of the value of technology events like the 16-17 April 2013 HP Government Software Summit is the personal interactions between attendees. Direct engagement with the many tech demos is also something you have to do at the event. But social media is allowing more and more of the gist of activities to [...]

Survey and Contest: Give us thoughts on the future of Hadoop in Federal IT and enter to win a week’s worth of Starbucks on CTOvision

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:36:34 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Dear readers, We really appreciate your inputs on all matters. Please keep your thoughts coming to us via any path easy for you. We would especially appreciate it if you take a minute to fill out our survey form below. We are looking for information that can help us produce more focused articles and white [...]

Skytree: A machine learning company focused on disrupting the advanced analytics market

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:16:42 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Skytree is a machine learning company focused on disrupting the advanced analytics market with a machine learning platform that gives organizations the power to discover deep analytic insights, predict future trends, make recommendations and reveal untapped markets and customers. They have a deep bench of talent, proven past performance, a growing list of clients, and [...]

Sign Up Today for 9 May Webinar: MarkLogic on Achieving Real Success with Hadoop

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:47:15 EDT

By Bob Gourley

MarkLogic has announced a 9 May webinar featuring Chris Biow, CTO of MarkLogic, in an overview on lessons learned, tips and techniques designed to accelerate fielding of Hadoop-based solutions. Their invite is below: Achieving Real Success with Hadoop Although Hadoop shows great promise for managing Big Data, many organizations are still struggling to decide which [...]

An interview with Ron Yaggi of IO: The Evolution of Datacenter Design

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:16:06 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Ron Yaggi, IO’s SVP of Federal stopped by our office last week. He sat down for a podcast with us, which is posted here. We have outlined the discussion in this post. Ron gave us some insight into his 27 year Air Force career, while he traveled widely on various assignments, he spent a great [...]

Army’s ‘Coral Reef’ intelligence analysis software among C4ISR Journal ‘Top 5′ technologies of 2012

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:49:15 EDT

By Bob Gourley

I noticed a nice post on the website of the United States Army today titled: “Army’s ‘Coral Reef’ intelligence analysis software among ‘Top 5′ technologies of 2012.” I was happy to read about the success of this capability, one of many being fielded by the DCGS-A program. The following is from the press release at: http://ctolink.us/10nE91U [...]

Facebook used as a billboard for malware, Officials and industry preparing for a more mobile government and more

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:03:37 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

Here are the top cybersecurity news and stories of the day. Facebook used as billboard for malware – “A cybercriminal has taken to selling his malware and related services on Facebook, boldly choosing a public forum to reach potential customers over the secretive world of the online underground.” This is a bold move by the [...]

Learn more about two of many new attacks – HTML5 Security

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:18:58 EDT

By Carsten Eilers

HTML5 brings new opportunities – for developers and for attackers. Here you will see two examples of how an attacker could abuse HTML5 and how you as a developer could prevent this (or not). These are only two of many new or improved attacks on web clients. I chose them for two reasons: the first is [...]

Apigee: If You Are in Enterprise IT You Should Check Them Out Now

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:35:00 EDT

In-Q-Tel just posted a press release on a recent strategic partnership and technology development agreement with a firm called Apigee. That statement alone is all the savvy technologist needs to know to start diving into Apigee. In-Q-Tel has a reputation for applying lots of focused thought into the firms they invest in and because of that have a terrific track record of finding very virtuous firms, so anyone they like I like.

Reminder: The most important Big Data event in DC this year will be 7 May. Sign up now.

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:36:15 EDT

By Bob Gourley

I really hope to see you at the 7 May 2013 Cloudera Session in DC. This event is loaded with lessons learned, advice and information you can use to reduce risk in your big data solution deployments. Here is more from our last post on the event. Check out the agenda and tell me if [...]

I Do Not Believe The Study That Says: The US has more than enough STEM-educated workers

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:33:03 EDT

By Bob Gourley

As the saying goes, you should not believe everything you think. Actually, maybe a better saying is, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. A recent study by a firm with a nice website and a long list of politicians as advisors has just published a study that says the US has plenty of [...]

The Case for XMPP

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:56:13 EDT

By BobGourley

Friends at Coversant have just released a new white paper capturing use cases, architecture, and lessons learned of their next generation communications and collaboration platform, SoapBox Server. This system is the key to deploying scalable, fast, highly interoperable, secure communications services. You can download the Coversant paper here: SoapBox: A Platform To Power The Industrial [...]

Fixmo Collaborates with U.S. Air Force to Enable Strategic Mobility on Apple iOS and Android Devices

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:05:03 EDT

By Bob Gourley

I’ve written before about how proud I am to be associated with Fixmo. As an advisor to them I’ve been excited to see first hand the hard work and focused engineering they are putting into solutions with an ability to scale to Internet size. To date, some of the most exciting news has been around [...]

Why I Love WebSockets

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:26:03 EDT

By Scott Mattocks

When I was in school, passing notes took some effort. First, you needed to find a piece of paper that was large enough for your message, but small enough that it could be folded into the requisite football shape. Next, you had to write something. Anything smaller than several sentences just wasn’t worth the overhead, [...]

Platform As A Service, Giving the IT world D-Business, Know your DAM use cases

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:31:06 EDT

By Marcus Williams

Today’s cyber news we are tracking: Platform As A Service, Giving the IT world d business, Know your DAM use cases, and more… Platform As A Service Platform As A Service (PaaS) is slowly becoming popular in the IT industry. Organizations are beginning to invest in a quicker solution for their everyday operations. PaaS affords [...]

An Interview with Ron Yaggi of IO

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:52:58 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

In this podcast I interviewed Ron Yaggi, SVP of IO Federal. IO is the leading provider of next-generation modular data center technology and services designs, engineers and delivers cloud enabling data center infrastructure and software for the world’s largest enterprises, governments and service providers. Ron spoke a bit about his history (a 25 year military career [...]

Are you working on BYOD? You might have things backwards. Think BWTD

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:17:26 EDT

By Bob Gourley

Everybody’s talking about the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend and the associated security challenges facing IT departments in both the public and private sectors. We have sure written about it here. Most IT organizations are currently focused on finding ways to permit the BYOD approach while ensuring they can restrict and contain what those devices are able [...]

Insights from the 4 April 2013 Government Big Data Forum: Part Three

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:33:36 EDT

By Ryan Kamauff

On 4 April 2013, Carahsoft sponsored the Third Annual Government Big Data Forum. This post is the third in a series that seeks to capture key elements of the forum and keep the dialog going. This post focuses on panels. The first panel was Infrastructure Needs and Capabilities, featuring Paul Brown, retired Technical Fellow of [...]

The CTOvision Mobile App: The latest edition to the CTOvision Technology Discovery Platform

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:17:31 EDT

By Bob Gourley

With this post we would like to announce an upgrade to the CTOvision mobile application, available for download now from all mobile app markets. We also provide an overview on other important free features you can use to get your job done easier. Announcing the CTOvision Mobile App: Free for all Android, iPad, or iPhone users The CTOvision mobile applications have been updated in both the [...]