Blog by Mike Small

Cisco Promises Future of the Internet – But Can They Deliver?
On December 11 th I attended an analyst webcast from Cisco entitled “The Future of the Internet”. At this Cisco unveiled its plans for its next generation of networking products. While this was interesting, it did not meet my expectations for a deeper vision of the future of the internet. The timing is interesting because 50 years ago in 1969 there were several events that were seminal to the internet. Many people will remember Apollo 11 and the moon landing – while this was an enormous achievement in its own right – it was the space race that led to the...
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AI for Governance and Governance of AI
Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic and many organizations are now starting to exploit these technologies, at the same time there are many concerns around the impact this will have on society. Governance sets the framework within which organizations conduct their business in a way that manages risk and compliance as well as to ensure an ethical approach. AI has the potential to improve governance and reduce costs, but it also creates challenges that need to be governed. The concept of AI is not new, but cloud computing has provided the access to data and the computing power needed to...
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Sustainable Data Management
Getting competitive advantage from data is not a new idea however, the volume of data now available and the way in which it is being collected and analysed has led to increasing concerns . As a result, there are a growing number of regulations over its collection, processing and use. Organization need to take care to ensure compliance with these regulations as well as to secure the data they use. This is increasing the costs and organizations need a more sustainable approach. In the past organizations could be confident that their data was held internally and was under their own...
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AI Myths, Reality and Challenges
The dream of being able to create systems that can simulate human thought and behaviour is not new. Now that this dream appears to be coming closer to reality there is both excitement and alarm. Famously, in 2014 Prof. Stephen Hawking told the BBC: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”. Should we be alarmed by these developments and what in practice does this mean today? The origins of today’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be traced back to the seminal work on computers by Dr Alan Turing. He proposed an experiment that...
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Are You Prepared for a Cyber-Incident?
According to the Ponemon Institute - cyber incidents that take over 30 days to contain cost $1m more than those contained within 30 days. However, less than 25% of organizations surveyed globally say that their organization has a coordinated incident response plan in place. In the UK, only 13% of businesses have an incident management process in place according to a government report . This appears to show a shocking lack of preparedness since it is when not if your organization will be the target of a cyber-attack. Last week on January 24th I attended a demonstration of...
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Can Autonomous Improve Security Posture?
Last week I attended the Oracle Open World Europe 2019 in London. At this event Andrew Sutherland VP of technology told us that security was one of the main reasons why customers were choosing the Oracle autonomous database. This is interesting for two reasons firstly it shows that security is now top of mind amongst the buyers of IT systems and secondly that buyers have more faith in technology than their own efforts. The first of these reasons is not surprising. The number of large data breaches disclosed by organizations continues to grow and enterprise databases contain the most...
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IBM Acquires Red Hat: The AI potential
On October 28 th IBM announced its intention to acquire Red Hat . At $34 Billion, this is the largest software acquisition ever.  So why would IBM pay such a large amount of money for an Open Source software company? I believe that this acquisition needs to be seen beyond looking just at DevOps and Hybrid Cloud, rather in the context of IBM’s view of the future where the business value from IT services will come from in future. This acquisition provides near-term tactical benefits from Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform and its participation in the Kubeflow project . It...
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The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Famously, in 2014 Prof. Stephen Hawking told the BBC: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." The ethical questions around Artificial Intelligence were discussed at a meeting led by the BCS President Chris Rees in London on October 2nd. This is also an area covered by KuppingerCole under the heading of Cognitive Technologies and this blog provides a summary of some of the issues that need to be considered. Firstly, AI is a generic term and it is important to understand precisely what this means. Currently the state of the art can be...
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Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security
As organizations go through digital transformation, the cyber challenges they face become more important. Their IT systems and applications become more critical and at the same time more open. The recent data breach suffered by British Airways illustrates the sophistication of the cyber adversaries and the difficulties faced by organization to prevent, detect, and respond to these challenges. One approach that is gaining ground is the application of AI technologies to cyber security and, at an event in London on September 24 th , IBM described how IBM Watson is being integrated with...
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Managing the Hybrid Multi Cloud
The primary factor that most organizations consider when choosing a cloud service is how well the service meets their functional needs.  However, this must be balanced against the non-functional aspects such as compliance, security and manageability . These aspects are increasingly becoming a challenge in the hybrid multi-cloud IT environment found in most organizations. This point was emphasized by  Virtustream  during their briefing in London on September 6 th , 2018.   Virtustream was founded in 2009 with a focus on providing cloud services for...
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Blockchain, Identity, Trust and Governance
On June 15th, 2018 I attended an OIX Workshop in London on this subject. The workshop was led by Don Thibeau of the Open Identity Exchange and Distributed Ledger foundation and was held in the Chartered Accountants’ Hall, Moorgate Place, London. Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is often associated with crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. However, it has a much wider applicability and holds the potential to solve a wide range of challenges. Whenever a technology is evolving, the governance is often neglected until there are incidents requiring greater participation of...
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PSEUDO WHAT AND GDPR?
GDPR comes into force on May 25th this year, the obligations from this are stringent, the penalties for non-compliance are severe and yet many organizations are not fully prepared. There has been much discussion in the press around the penalties under GDPR for data breaches. KuppingerCole’s advice is that preparation based on six key activities is the best way to avoid these penalties. The first two activities are first to find the personal data and second to control access to this data. While most organizations will be aware of where personal data is used as part of their...
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