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Key Factors in The Future of computing

This article explores the key factors that will shape the future of computing in the government enterprise over the next 10 years. It discusses the challenges faced by the intelligence community and presents case studies and solutions for implementing advanced technologies. The article also highlights the importance of network effect, scalability, and security in enterprise computing.

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Key Factors in The Future of computing

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  1. Lewis Shepherd Chief Technology Officer Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments Key Factors in The Future of computing in the Government Enterprise

  2. An Exercise in Prediction, with the Intelligence Community as an Example “What technologies will be required over the next 10 years to protect U.S. interests?” What if we had asked that question, 10 years ago?

  3. Some Surprises Post-9/11 “Asymmetric adversary” = an information challenge (“hard target”) • Seeming irrelevance of traditional methods for new targets • Order of battle (counting military elements) • State-to-state analysis • “Kremlinological” approaches • Challenges of IT during wartime • Stress on systems infrastructure of 2 wars • Stress on software (link-analysis, SNA, “search”) • Stress on collection capacity (sensor grids, Internet) • Stress on analysts’ – and technologists’ – imagination

  4. Limits of “Search” for Prediction We don’t have a “Search” capability to reach inside enemy minds … yet

  5. How does THIS … … help perform analysis on THIS? IT Challenge: Low-Observable Adversary Our databases had no fields for box-cutters, IM accounts

  6. Case Study: Intelligence Community • The IC’s post-9/11 challenge • Some identified solutions: • Grid/Cloud computing • Secure SOA platform • Web 2.0 tools (Intellipedia, A-Space) • Implementation challenges

  7. What Drives the Future of Enterprise Computing Network Effect The value for a new user of a service depends on the number of existing users of the service… “Critical mass” can lead to “Bandwagon effect”…

  8. Side-Effects of Network Effect • Exponential growth of networks, systems Requires Scale • Exposes networks to “edge audiences” Requires Security • Derives new wisdom from growing “crowd” Makes Smart Systems

  9. Scale

  10. Scale: a Challenge for Large Commercial Enterprises • Scaled growth + social factors drive dispersion of workforce • Challenges in remote infrastructure management • IT Solutions for remote infrastructure optimization… • …But remote access creates info-security challenges H Q Remote infrastructure “Government No Exception”

  11. Remote Office IT Scenarios Data Center Virtualized Server Single Server Remote Office Appliance Secure Centralization No Infrastructure

  12. No Infrastructure • Characteristics • Eliminates all server and networking hardware from the remote office. • Relies on network connectivity to the data center to enable all remote office functionality. • Mobile users and remote office employees connect via VPN to the data center and access applications virtually through any internet browser.

  13. Microsoft Inc. as an Enterprise Example • 141,000 end users • 260,000 computers • 550 Buildings in 98 countries • 358,000 SharePoint sites • 2,500 internal applications • 2,500,000 internal E-mails per day • 18,000,000 incoming E-mails per day (97% filter) • 136,000 E-mail Server accounts • 1,000,000 remote connections per month 29 billion E-mails sent per day 280 billion page views per day 435 million unique users 6 billion instant messages (IMs) per day

  14. Defense Intelligence Agency as an Enterprise Example • One of 16 agencies in the Intelligence Community • 9,000+ personnel • DIA IT systems support the entire intelligence community • 100,000+ users of DIA’s Top Secret network, apps, data • Global reach through IT support of all DoD Commands • Pacific Command, European Command, etc. • The only true “all-source” agency in the IC • Collection (signals intell, human intell, measurements & signatures, etc)

  15. The Challenge: Stovepiped Analytic Capabilities 1200+

  16. Security

  17. The Security Side of “Enterprise 2.0”

  18. Secret to a Walled Garden: Control • Definition: On the Internet, a walled garden is an environment that controls the user's access to Web content and services. In effect, the walled garden directs the user's navigation within particular areas, to allow access to a selection of material, or prevent access to other material. [SearchSecurity.com]

  19. Why Walled-Garden Content & Systems? • Rationale on the Internet: Money • Paid-Access Content Revenue • Member-Fee Revenue • Exclusive Ad Revenue (Segmented Eyeballs) • Value of Intellectual Property • “Enterprise” Rationale: Security • Trade Secrets in Operational Data • Competitive Advantages • Regulatory Control over Data “Government No Exception”

  20. Smart Systems

  21. Need for Analytic Reform • Traditional IC output: ~50,000 stand-alone reports/year • Many redundancies • Produced in agency/organization silos • Lack of collaborative capabilities across (and within) agencies • “Intelink” (the IC-wide shared domain) seen as a backlot • Forcing Function: 9/11 Commission Report • Key Recommendation: From Need-to-Know to Need-to-Share! • Realization: “Something that’s 80 percent accurate, on-time, and sharable, is better than something that is perfectly formatted, but too much, too late, and over-classified.” Chris Rasmussen, NGA

  22. Birth Pangs of IC Web 2.0: 2004-2005 • Early Efforts were internal, agency-specific projects • CIA’s internal blogs, 2004 • DIA’s internal “IntelliPedia” wiki, 2004 • NGA’s internal blogs, early 2005 • DIA’s AJAX mashups in “Lab X,” 2004-05 • CIA’s del.ici.ous lookalike, Tag/Connect, 2005 • A “Wisdom of Crowds” Culture was forming by 2005 • Joint trips to outside conferences • Cross-agency collaboration on metadata tagging • Formation of “IC Enterprise Services” group, or ICES • Tipping Points, sparked by ICES: • August 2005 launch of “Intelink Blogs” • April 2006 launch of IC-wide Intellipedia

  23. One thing we learned wiki-wiki…

  24. Key Distinctions, Intellipediavs Wikipedia Business Practices of intelligence analysis & reporting demanded certain technical features: • Not open to the public, only users with access to the IC’s Top Secret network (JWICS), accounts created by ICES. • No anonymity. All edits and additions are traceable. • Intellipedia does not enforce a “neutral point of view” • Actually intended to represent various points of view; viewpoints are attributed to the agencies, offices, and individuals participating • Consensus may or may not emerge!

  25. Intellipedia’s Hockey-Stick Growth

  26. The Top-Secret Wiki Gets Cloned • Summer 2007, ICES introduced 2 new Intellipedia versions: • One on the SECRET network “SIPRNET” • One on a “Sensitive But Unclassified” network “DNI(U)” (a protected trunk apart from the regular Internet) • Rationale: • Many military intelligence analysts (and most soldiers) only have access to SIPRNET • Many DHS personnel and Law Enforcement have no clearances whatsoever for classified information • Many IC personnel like to work at home on research and topical news items

  27. Walled Gardens Within Walled Gardens: Relative Value of Classified Information Relative Number of Users, Also Relative Volume of Data Relative Growth in Intellipedia Pages

  28. Anticipate a Network Effect for DNI(U)? Expect increasing rates of growth for DNI(U) usage and information sharing • Improved realtime Internet data-mining • Awareness of value of collaboration outside traditional IC boundaries (DHS, LE, foreign partners) • Improved Web 2.0 tools deployed on DNI(U) to mirror those on JWICS and the Internet

  29. Intellipedia Totals on All Three Networks 64,782 users2.3 million edits

  30. Bottom Line: Knowledge Work is Universal

  31. New IC Focus: “Analytic Transformation” • Launched by ODNI, April 2007 • Both “analysis” side and “techie” side • DDNI/A and DNI CIO are the two project owners • Several key programs: • Community-wide “IC Data Layer” to aggregate access to “all” databases (no one knows the true number) • A-Space, a16-agency “collaborative environment for analysis” • DNI assigned job of ICDL and A-Space to DIA on behalf of full IC - because of our SOA work

  32. DIA’s Alien: All-Source Intelligence Environment SOA Planning Begun 2005: Full web-services framework • Alien is a framework, not a single tool • Reliant on globally networked set of data centers • New best-of-breed analytic software Alien data services – tying data together • Message traffic and other text sources • Traditional single-INT databases • Integrated security architecture for single sign-on

  33. Alien allows tools to exploit semantically-enhanced data METS: Metadata Extraction & Tagging Service “Black-box Tagging Factory” combines 13 separate best-of-breed entity-identifiers, natural-language processors, disambiguators, tagging engines. 34

  34. Key Desired Features of A-Space Wikis, blogs, social networking, personalized RSS feeds, collaborative cloud-based word processing, mash-ups, and content tagging… … all built atop an underlying SOA.

  35. A-Space: think “iGoogle,” “Live Spaces”

  36. Metrics (a key post-9/11 recommendation)

  37. A-Space Pilot Schedule: Bridge Too Far? • Pilot Awarded Sep 14, 2007 • Pilot Development and Integration Sep 14-Nov 23, 2007 • Pilot Development Freeze Nov 23, 2007 • Integration Testing and IPAT Nov 26-30, 2007 • Functional Testing (Approved Users) Dec 3-7, 2007 • Final Clean Up Dec 10-12, 2007 • C&A DIA* Dec 13-14, 2007 • C&A DNI* Dec 17-19, 2007 • Installation at DIA’s main Data Center Dec 20-28, 2007 • Prototype available to IC users Dec 31, 2007

  38. Do NOT delete – source data!!! IT ROI Matters (cont’d)Many corporate IT projects fall short of expectations Lesson: Many Enterprise IT Projects Fall Short of Expectations Average IT Project Success • Time overruns • Budget overruns • Incomplete features • Incomplete functions • On time • On budget • Desired features • Desired functions • Cancelled prior to completion • Abandoned “Government No Exception” Source: CIO Executive Board research; Standish Group 2004 CHAOS Report

  39. Other Government Examples: epa.wik.is http://epa.wik.is/

  40. epa.wik.is goes mashupbigtime • Extensibility: Integration with Yahoo!, Windows Live, Google, Flickr, WidgetBox, YouTube, and much more. • “Data reuse in mashups will revolutionize EPA data architecture, data management, and data reuse applications!” EPA Architect Brand Niemann

  41. Near-Future IT Enablers for the IC Semantic Web - Global all-source system enabling rich ontological information management • autonomously and presumptively alerting analysts • automatically populating knowledge bases • cueing other military and IT systems GIGINT - ability to mine and control the Global Information Grid without human intervention, including the billions of sensor/ RFID/nano/autonomous devices communicating with the Grid. • Gartner: By 2013, more than 200 billion processors will be in daily use around the world

  42. Virtual Worlds • New methods of modeling, simulation, and collaboration are being created for analysts and collectors • “Knowledge Walls” and Crisis Centers can be built more cheaply in a Virtual World, still using real-time feeds

  43. Research Underway for Future Enterprise Effectiveness • SOA environments driven entirely by business processes • Cross-Domain capabilities as embedded, intuitive services • Rapid increases in speed/volume of sensor and analytic feeds • Stateless devices (the ultimate thin client “computer”) • Wideband agile human interfaces, and true video tele-presence • The far edges of technological support for analysis: • Support to prediction; • Crisis uncertainty management; • Dynamic retasking of machines by machines...

  44. Lesson: Joint Leadership Responsibility 100 Business Leaders Accountability CIO IT Portfolio Lifecycle 0 “Government No Exception”

  45. Lewis Shepherd Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments www.ShepherdsPi.com

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