“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In this final episode of season one of rethink: IT, I discuss why Arthur C. Clarke’s famous phrase should be a touchstone for technology performance in the enterprise.
John Eisenman analyzes blockchain architectures and applications at Orange Silicon Valley. In Part 2 of this two-part podcast, he covers Consensus Algorithms, Sybil’s multiple personalities, and why Bitcoin burns almost as much energy as the entire country of Austria. Most importantly, John proposes that CIOs should view blockchains not just as technology but rather as a decentralization model to transform business processes. Can blockchains stop contaminated arugula from reaching your kitchen table? In theory. Are blockchains truly ready for the enterprise today. Not quite. Will blockchains drive foundational change in the enterprise over the next decade? Absolutely.
John Eisenman analyzes blockchain architectures and applications at Orange Silicon Valley (https://www.orangesv.com/). In Part 1 of this two-part podcast, he addresses blockchain myths, especially around security. He addresses confusions between cryptography and encryption, the role of data ownership, and the origins of the “Don’t Trust, Verify” cypherpunk ethos that became the basis of blockchains.
Tom and his Sentient team built the largest distributed AI system in the world, with one million PCs across thousands of Internet cafes in China. In this episode, he describes that journey and how those learnings can help CIOs looking to maximize their compute power and minimize their cost as they move workloads to the cloud.
Robin is responsible for building businesses around new technologies, including artificial intelligence. In this episode, he shares learnings from an innovative program in Finland for educating the population about AI and from the brand-new national AI center in Sweden for driving better AI outcomes. We discuss why AI must become affordable, practical, and ethical, and we end with tips on how to get your internal IT and business teams up to speed on AI to trigger their own innovation.
Guest: Dr. Jesse Sowell, Faculty Fellow at the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Center and the Mays Innovation Research Center Dr. Sowell proposes a fundamental shift in enterprise security mindset, taking the rule-breaker out of the shadows to promote innovation and accountability, and leveraging shadow IT as primary research into workflow innovation. Dr. Sowell holds a PhD in technology, management, and policy from MIT and is Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Sowell discusses the cybersecurity implications of accelerating technology change and how CIOs must rethink the feedback loop between front-line workers and security professionals. Dr. Sowell holds a PhD in technology, management, and policy from MIT and is Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University.
Mr. Robot’s plots are fiction but based on reality. Designing security exploits is like filming the show, with most of the work “off-camera” and behind-the-scenes. In this episode, James describes why the transactional nature of IT makes organizations vulnerable and why CIOs and CISOs need to fundamentally rethink how they structure and prioritize the work of their teams. We also discuss how to make attackers noisy, the role of laziness in hacking, and why James didn’t get a consulting gig for the recent Queen biopic starring Rami Malek.
Over the last 20 years, Babak Hodjat invented the technology behind Siri, applied evolutionary algorithms to stock trading, and brought machine learning to website optimization. Now he cuts through the hype of AI to identify the missing link for moving AI from being useful to being truly transformative in an enterprise.
You probably ask your phone for weather, traffic, or music all the time. It’s cool, but the potential of natural language in the enterprise goes well beyond hands-free information discovery. Twenty years ago, Babak Hodjat invented the technology behind Siri, and now he describes the context embedded in language and why the future of robotics depends on you being able to talk with a machine.
The new digital divide is not about access to IT. It’s about how the technology is used. We are cramming more and more data into our clouds, and we’re using more and more AI to analyze it. We’ve created a fantastic engine. But without a steering wheel, we’ll go nowhere. We need an actionable experience on the front end to drive the data toward the desired direction. Sean Ginevan shows us how. He’s the Head of Global Strategy & Market Enablement at Android Enterprise. His work with Android and their enterprise partners gives him real insight into how businesses are using data, and how they’re sometimes missing it. Sean joined us on our rethink: IT podcast to show us how to connect data with experience and enable true digital transformation.
Will the move from 4G to 5G accelerate the demise of the corporate network? Russ Mohr, Field Engineering Director at MobileIron, thinks it absolutely will. Russ joined us on our rethink: IT podcast and shared how 5G latency reduction will have a profound impact on edge computing, data architectures, and application services. Yes — 5G is about a lot more than faster-loading mobile websites. (The latency reduction alone allows a high-speed race car driver to use VR to navigate a speedway using a 5G network.) Before his six-year stint at MobileIron, Russ worked with Research in Motion, Lucent, and Net2Phone. Tune in to learn how 5G is affecting the entire IT landscape.
Have we gone too far down the rabbit hole of digital tech? Without our (digital) health, we don’t have anything. Work continually invades our personal lives, and without the ability to switch work off, we never truly become unglued from our digital lives. We’re digitally unhealthy. When Sean Ginevan visited Japan, he noticed something. Leaders there were very concerned about digital well-being and the overall balance of work and life in their employees. Sean works at Android Enterprise as the Head of Global Strategy & Market Enablement. He’s helping implement new features that create a more digitally healthy workplace and culture. He came on our rethink: IT podcast and let us in on how Android and the digital landscape is evolving with tools like “work profiles” to enhance our digital well-being.
We hear the blockchain hype. We see blockchain implementations like crypto-currency start to reshape the financial industry. But should blockchain matter to IT? Suresh Batchu, CTO and Co-Founder of MobileIron, describes the disruptive potential of blockchain on enterprise identity.
IT administrators face a huge problem when dealing with Android across their organization: fragmentation. It’s what keeps Kurt Westphal up at night. He’s part of the AppConfig technical team, and they’re redefining Android. On this episode, we hear about their partnership with Google and how they’ve created OEMConfig, a standardization across the Android ecosystem that will allow OEMs to push upgrades and applications straight to devices, without having to integrate with the EMM.
SIM cards are widely used across cellular networks, and they require tedious steps to activating new devices, changing phone numbers, or changing networks. These issues are compounded in company-owned technology — each time a device changes networks or phone numbers, the SIM must be reprovisioned or replaced altogether. But a new solution is emerging, called eSIM. With this new process, the SIM is no longer stored on a removable hardware, but it is actually embedded within the device itself, and it can be reprovisioned remotely. How far out is this solution? Some devices manufacturers, such as Google and Apple, are already putting eSIM within their new devices, according to Suresh Batchu, CTO & co-founder at MobileIron. He came on this episode of rethink:IT to share how eSIM technology will impact enterprise IT and end-user efficiency.
James Plouffe is Technical Consultant to the award-winning hacker drama “Mr. Robot” on USA Network, as well as Lead Architect at MobileIron. Two years ago he wrote a fascinating predicter of the evolution of IoT security. In this episode, we discuss what came true, what changed, and the current state of IoT security.
Michael Raggo is Chief Security Officer at 802 Secure. His research has been highlighted on CNN Tech; he has briefed the FBI and Pentagon; and he is the author of multiple books on cybersecurity, including “Data Hiding,” which is included in the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum. In this episode, he cuts through the hype of IoT security to identify what threats actually matter, how the attack surface is changing, and what IT leaders can do to better train themselves and their teams.
Rich Festante is Solutions Architect at MobileIron. In this episode, Rich describes the three models of authentication, the impact of cloud services, and the implications companies are most likely to miss for user experience and technology architecture.
James Plouffe is Technical Consultant to the award-winning hacker drama “Mr. Robot” on USA Network, as well as Lead Architect at MobileIron. Though Mr. Robot is fiction, its hacking plots are absolutely based on reality. In this episode, James shares his experiences on the show and describes what Mr. Robot can teach IT leaders about security strategy.