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While the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project is not the only blockchain implementation out there, enterprises interested in distributed ledger technology should pay attention to it in 2017. In less than a year, the effort gained 100 active members and now another eight have joined, the Foundation announced:
Insight Blog
Today's Leadership Models Fail To Address Responsive And Responsible Leadership
The World Economic Forum kicks off January 17th to 20th in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. As the global theme for the annual meeting, responsive and responsible leadership begins a lofty conversation about the qualities required to bring generations together, create inclusiveness in growth opportunities, and to bridge cultural and economic divides.
Analyst Blog
Or Reorientating how engineers think about privacy.
From my chapter Blending the practices of Privacy and Information Security to navigate Contemporary Data Protection Challenges in "Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Relations as a Challenge for Democracy", Kloza & Svantesson (editors), in press.
One of the leading efforts to inculcate privacy into engineering practice has been the "Privacy by Design" movement. Commonly abbreviated "PbD" is a set of guidelines developed in the 1990s by the then privacy commissioner of Ontario, Ann Cavoukian. The movement seeks to embed privacy "into the design specifications of technologies, business practices, and physical infrastructures". PbD is basically the same good idea as build in security, or build in quality, because retrofitting these things too late in the design lifecycle leads to higher costs* and compromised, sub-optimal outcomes.
Privacy by Design attempts to orientate technologists to privacy with a set of simple callings:
1. Proactive not Reactive; Preventative not Remedial
2. Privacy as the Default Setting
3. Privacy Embedded into Design
4. Full Functionality - Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
5. End-to-End Security - Full Lifecycle Protection
6. Visibility and Transparency - Keep it Open
7. Respect for User Privacy - Keep it User-Centric.
PbD is a well-meaning effort, and yet its language comes from a culture quite different from engineering. PbD's maxims rework classic privacy principles without providing much that's tangible to working systems designers.
The most problematic aspect of Privacy by Design is its idealism. Politically, PbD is partly a response to the cynicism of national security zealots and the like who tend to see privacy as quaint or threatening. Infamously, NSA security consultant Ed Giorgio was quoted in "The New Yorker" of 21 January 2008 as saying "privacy and security are a zero-sum game". Of course most privacy advocates (including me) find that proposition truly chilling. And yet PbD's response is frankly just too cute with its slogan that privacy is a "positive sum game".
The truth is privacy is full of contradictions and competing interests, and we ought not sugar coat it. For starters, the Collection Limitation principle - which I take to be the cornerstone of privacy - can contradict the security or legal instinct to always retain as much data as possible, in case it proves useful one day. Disclosure Limitation can conflict with usability, because Personal Information may become siloed for privacy's sake and less freely available to other applications. And above all, Use Limitation can restrict the revenue opportunities that digital entrepreneurs might otherwise see in all the raw material they are privileged to have gathered.
Now, by highlighting these tensions, I do not for a moment suggest that arbitrary interests should override privacy. But I do say it is naive to flatly assert that privacy can be maximised along with any other system objective. It is better that IT designers be made aware of the many trade-offs that privacy can entail, and that they be equipped to deal with real world compromises implied by privacy just as they do with other design requirements. For this is what engineering is all about: resolving conflicting requirements in real world systems.
So a more sophisticated approach than "Privacy by Design" is privacy engineering in which privacy can take its place within information systems design alongside all the other practical considerations that IT professionals weigh up everyday, including usability, security, efficiency, profitability, and cost.
See also my "Getting Started Guide: Privacy Engineering" from Constellation Research.
*Footnote
Not unrelatedly, I wonder if we should re-examine the claim that retrofitting privacy, security and/or quality after a system has been designed and realised leads to greater cost! Cold hard experience might suggest otherwise. Clearly, a great many organisations persist with bolting on these sorts of features late in the day -- or else advocates wouldn't have to keep telling them not to. And the Minimum Viable Product movement is almost a license to defer quality and other non-essential considerations. All businesses are cost conscious, right? So averaged across a great many projects over the long term, could it be that businesses have in fact settled on the most cost effective timing of security engineering, and it's not as politically correct as we'd like?!
Analyst Blog
By now you know the idea... Check out the Q1 (here), Q2 (here) and Q3 (here) shootouts on Future of Work.
Analyst Blog
By now you know the idea... Check out the Q1 (here), Q2 (here) and Q3 (here) shootouts on Next Generation Applications. These quarters were won by Microsoft with Conversation as a Platform, Pivotal / Cloud Foundry, and Oracle.
Analyst Blog
By now you know the idea... Check out the Q1 (here) and Q2 (here) shootouts on Next Generation Applications. These quarters were won by Ceridian and Microsoft (acquisition of LinkedIn).
Analyst Blog
By now you know the idea... Check out the Q1 (here) and Q2 (here) shootouts on Next Generation Applications. These quarters were won by Microsoft with Conversation as a Platform and Pivotal / Cloud Foundry.
Analyst Blog
2016 is the year of M&A not to mention disruptive technology developments and forays into this brave new world of AI, robotics, machine learning, virtual reality, blockchain technology, IoT, and significant digital transformation. You can explore our Constellation Insights to see the big stories that we covered in 2016 or to get set for 2017.
Analyst Blog
As 2016 winds down, the enterprise tech industry machine is about to rev up again with the New Year. January is traditionally a big year for tech conferences, topped by the Consumer Electronics Show, which despite the name has plenty of relevance for enterprises. Here's a look at the must-watch events in the month ahead.
Insight Blog
During the Fall of 2014 at Salesforce’s annual conference Dreamforce, I gave a presentation titled “From Clippy to JARVIS" where I explained how the next generation of software was going to assist people in getting their work done. Back then, terms like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning had not reached the massive level of hype that they are currently experiencing today. Instead, my presentation discussed topics like task automation, extracting insights, and providing recommendations.
Analyst Blog
Apple is a famously secretive company but last year, its head of AI research made a public pledge that on that front, things would be different going forward. Now Apple has made good on its promise by releasing its first publicly accessible paper on AI research.
Insight Blog
Quarks
IBM Bolsters Blockchain Ecosystem in Preparation for Next-Generation Applications
IBM announced in December 2016 that it would help create, foster and support an ecosystem around Hyperledger Fabric v1.0, an open source collaborative effort to advance blockchain technologies.1
By now you will be familiar with my year end development and trends shootout, this one is about Future of Work trends and developments in Q2 2016. If you missed the Q1 Future of Work post - it can be found here.
Analyst Blog
Premium Research
An Introduction to How AI Can Augment the Way People Get Work Done
Case Study
Case Study: Persistent Systems and Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech
How the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech Fights Ebola and Zika with High-Performance Analytics
This was a banner year for enterprise software that saw mega-vendors continue shifting their on-premises license business to the cloud, many major acquisitions and the continued emergence of IoT and AI as factors driving next-generation applications. Here's a look back at three key stories that exemplify the year in enterprise software and which will have resonance in 2017.
Insight Blog
Sometimes my year in review is a summary of my year's book reviews. Last year it was a looking forward piece about books I planned to read (and I'm happy to say I enjoyed and gained value from them all). This year it is a "top picks" offering, with the Organizational Health theme coming from a chance meeting this Fall.
Analyst Blog
Integrating ERP, CRM, and legacy systems lead to greater manufacturing innovation, setting the foundation to move beyond business models that don’t stay in step with customers’ fast-changing needs. Bringing contextual intelligence into manufacturing that centers on customers’ unique, fast-changing requirements is a must-have to keep growing sales profitably. By integrating ERP, CRM, SCM, pricing and legacy systems together, manufacturers can provide customers what they want most, and that’s accurate, fast responses to their questions and perfect orders delivered.
Analyst Blog
Vendor Profile
In 2010, SAP debuted its in-memory database, SAP HANA, which offers a unique, differentiated strategy among enterprise application vendors.
By now you know the idea I had to square off the top news and developments of each quarter of 2016 in playoff / bracket format...
Analyst Blog
There is always time to try something new - and instead of writing one more year review on what happened in my research areas, I thought I make this more entertaining, and provider a 'playoff' of the news in each quarter. I started with NextGen Apps for Q1 2016 - take a look here.
Analyst Blog
There is always time to try something new - and instead of writing one more year review on what happened in my research areas, I thought I make this more entertaining, and provider a 'playoff' of the news in each quarter.
Analyst Blog
It has been stated that IoT is the killer App for Cloud Computing, but given that the definition of Cloud Computing itself is often difficult, this seems to add to the difficulty of defining Cloud based IoT Services.
Analyst Blog