Li MN

Chris is Senior Director at Polar where he is building a new emerging data platforms and disruptive analytics practice area. The intersection of data, open source, and platform thinking is simply too important for the corporate enterprise to ignore.

This work fits nicely with the concept of Intentional Emergence - bringing the vibrancy and innovation of the web to the large enterprise by enabling its edges. To that end he encourages agile software development, platform thinking, generative technology policy, and the development of open source software in the large scale corporate and government enterprise.

In previous lives he advised the DoD on emerging technologies, built B2B reverse auction systems, brought heuristic-based optimization and online trading to the corporate treasury, and traveled the world as a Navy Officer. Unfortunately from his vantage point it all looked like the inside of a submarine. He spends his free time hacking silver halides with decidedly low-tech gear.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE CLOUD: PRICE ISN’T ENOUGH

Last October Simon Wardley and I stood on a rainy sidewalk at 28th St. in NYC arguing politely (he’s British) about the future of cloud adoption. He argued, rightly, that the cost advantages from scale would be overwhelming compared to home-brew private clouds. He went on to argue, less certainly in my view, that this would lead inevitably to their wholesale and deep adoption across the enterprise market. 

 

I think Simon bases his argument on something like the Rational Economic Man theory of the enterprise. Or, more specifically, the Rational Economic CFO. If the costs of a service provider are destined to be lower than the costs of internally-operated alternatives, and your CFO is rational (most tend to be), then the conclusion is foregone.

 

And of course, costs are going down just as they are predicted to. Look at this post by Avi Deitcher, Does Amazon’s Web Services Pricing Follow Moore’s Law? I think the question posed in the title has a fairly obvious answer. No. Services aren’t just silicon, they include all manner of linear terms, like labor, so the price decreases will almost certainly be slower than Moore’s law, but his analysis of the costs of a modestly sized AWS solution and in-house competition is really useful. 

 

Not only is AWS’ price dropping fast (56% in three years), but it’s significantly cheaper than building and operating a platform in house. Avi does the math for 600 instances over three years and finds that the cost for AWS would be $1.1M (I don’t think this number considers out-year price decreases) vs. $2.3M for DIY. You’re mileage may vary, but these numbers are a nice starting point for further discussion.

 

These results raise an interesting question, if the numbers are so compelling, why did Walmart just reveal that they are building a ginormous private cloud? Why would anyone?

 

Let’s look at some numbers. There is a large east coast bank that has about 120,000 server images. Let’s assume to simplify things that those aren’t just virtual images but map to hardware nearly one to one. 

 

I’m almost certain that BigBank's costs aren’t as high per unit as 600 Corp's. At over 100,000 instances they’ll experience at least some of the scaling benefits that AWS itself has. Rather than do a careful estimate, let’s just assume that their efficiency is half way between AWS and 600 Corp. If that were the case, their cost to buy, operate, and manage those servers might look like: ($1.1M + $2.3M)/2 * 120,000/600 ~ $340M over three years. I’ve seen it reported that they have 4000 developers and a total annual IT budget of $750M so these numbers seem at least reasonable.

 

So, if Rational CFO makes big bank switch everything to AWS, and ignoring switching costs for now, what will they save?

 

$340M - $1.1*120,000/600 ~ $120M in savings over three years, or about $40M per year. Again, this leaves out transition costs, and it also ignores out-year AWS price decreases, but it’s probably in the ball park.

 

$40M annually is a lot of money and no CFO would ignore it, rational or not. But total revenues at this company are $34B with profits of $10B/year. So, the incremental benefit of moving all compute to AWS is only .4% of profit. Again, that’s not nothing, but it’s not a top-line driver of business results.

 

Interestingly, even if AWS were to continue improving its cost advantage through a combination of increasing scale and Moore’s Law, all the way to free, a move would still only improve this company’s bottom line by .8% annually. 

 

I think this is the point that some public cloud proponents miss. We are talking about decisions that at least feel like high risk and they don’t seem to produce the material levels of ROI necessary to give up control.

 

This is not unlike the choices consumers make every day when they buy a car and choose the convenience of an SUV over the fuel economy of alternatives. For many people, the incremental fuel cost just isn’t that big of a deal in the context of their total household budget. If they do choose not to go with an SUV it’s often because of other concerns.

 

I think private cloud will be around, at least in very large enterprises, for a long time and for similar reasons. The control the CIO (and general counsel) seeks will trump the narrower interests of Rational Economic CFO. And I don’t see lots of CIO’s taking huge risks and kicking off expensive five year transition plans to improve profitability by .4%.

 

Two more thoughts before I wrap this up.

 

It’s possible that the meta-trend of corporate digitization (meaning, IT has a front end business enabler rather than just  back end record keeper) will make IT costs a more material component of a lot of businesses. This might change the character of an analysis like this for some businesses, however, I used a bank as my example, and they are already using IT aggressively at the front end of the business and have high IT costs relative to revenues. These guys have the most to gain by switching, and so far, aren’t. In fact, so far they are the kinds of companies most interested in projects like Open Compute because they see the future in their own data centers.

 

On the other hand, we might argue that companies that use IT less aggressively would be more likely to take advantage of public cloud. The argument here would be that, since they run fewer servers, their internal costs are higher on a per-server basis (they are less efficient because of lower scale) so their apparent savings per server would be higher. This is probably true, but they would also see savings *as a percentage of profit* even lower and less material. Better savings on a per unit basis, but perhaps even lower down the CIO / CFO’s priority list on a magnitude-of-impact basis.

 

Another common argument toward public cloud is “well, of course the legacy stuff is stuck, but the new stuff will go to the cloud.” This may be true, and there are obvious examples of this happening, but I don’t think it’s any more of an iron clad argument than it’s more general cousin.

 

Moving some workloads to the cloud while maintaining core systems in house adds complexity and almost as much perceived risk as moving everything, but for much lower apparent savings (How much would that bank I mentioned save by putting 100 machines on AWS?). This will certainly happen, especially for discrete workloads that are time-variant, but I’m not convinced that moving all new workloads to AWS is anyone’s low energy state.

 

I’ll caveat all of this with a “who knows?” and a shrug. However, if you’re confused as to why enterprises are taking so long to adopt public cloud, it might not be because they are stupid, it might just be that the risk relative to the savings isn’t enough to drive the behavior you were expecting (or depending on).

 

Simon, what did I get wrong?  Read more on the home page

 

I think Simon bases his argument on something like the Rational Economic Man theory of the enterprise. Or, more specifically, the Rational Economic CFO. If the costs of a service provider are destined to be lower than the costs of internally-operated alternatives, and your CFO is rational (most tend to be), then the conclusion is foregone.

 

And of course, costs are going down just as they are predicted to. Look at this post by Avi Deitcher, Does Amazon’s Web Services Pricing Follow Moore’s Law? I think the question posed in the title has a fairly obvious answer. No. Services aren’t just silicon, they include all manner of linear terms, like labor, so the price decreases will almost certainly be slower than Moore’s law, but his analysis of the costs of a modestly sized AWS solution and in-house competition is really useful. 

 

Not only is AWS’ price dropping fast (56% in three years), but it’s significantly cheaper than building and operating a platform in house. Avi does the math for 600 instances over three years and finds that the cost for AWS would be $1.1M (I don’t think this number considers out-year price decreases) vs. $2.3M for DIY. You’re mileage may vary, but these numbers are a nice starting point for further discussion.

 

These results raise an interesting question, if the numbers are so compelling, why did Walmart just reveal that they are building a ginormous private cloud? Why would anyone?

 

Let’s look at some numbers. There is a large east coast bank that has about 120,000 server images. Let’s assume to simplify things that those aren’t just virtual images but map to hardware nearly one to one. 

 

I’m almost certain that BigBank's costs aren’t as high per unit as 600 Corp's. At over 100,000 instances they’ll experience at least some of the scaling benefits that AWS itself has. Rather than do a careful estimate, let’s just assume that their efficiency is half way between AWS and 600 Corp. If that were the case, their cost to buy, operate, and manage those servers might look like: ($1.1M + $2.3M)/2 * 120,000/600 ~ $340M over three years. I’ve seen it reported that they have 4000 developers and a total annual IT budget of $750M so these numbers seem at least reasonable.

 

So, if Rational CFO makes big bank switch everything to AWS, and ignoring switching costs for now, what will they save?

 

$340M - $1.1*120,000/600 ~ $120M in savings over three years, or about $40M per year. Again, this leaves out transition costs, and it also ignores out-year AWS price decreases, but it’s probably in the ball park.

 

$40M annually is a lot of money and no CFO would ignore it, rational or not. But total revenues at this company are $34B with profits of $10B/year. So, the incremental benefit of moving all compute to AWS is only .4% of profit. Again, that’s not nothing, but it’s not a top-line driver of business results.

 

Interestingly, even if AWS were to continue improving its cost advantage through a combination of increasing scale and Moore’s Law, all the way to free, a move would still only improve this company’s bottom line by .8% annually. 

 

I think this is the point that some public cloud proponents miss. We are talking about decisions that at least feel like high risk and they don’t seem to produce the material levels of ROI necessary to give up control.

 

This is not unlike the choices consumers make every day when they buy a car and choose the convenience of an SUV over the fuel economy of alternatives. For many people, the incremental fuel cost just isn’t that big of a deal in the context of their total household budget. If they do choose not to go with an SUV it’s often because of other concerns.

 

I think private cloud will be around, at least in very large enterprises, for a long time and for similar reasons. The control the CIO (and general counsel) seeks will trump the narrower interests of Rational Economic CFO. And I don’t see lots of CIO’s taking huge risks and kicking off expensive five year transition plans to improve profitability by .4%.

 

Two more thoughts before I wrap this up.

 

It’s possible that the meta-trend of corporate digitization (meaning, IT has a front end business enabler rather than just  back end record keeper) will make IT costs a more material component of a lot of businesses. This might change the character of an analysis like this for some businesses, however, I used a bank as my example, and they are already using IT aggressively at the front end of the business and have high IT costs relative to revenues. These guys have the most to gain by switching, and so far, aren’t. In fact, so far they are the kinds of companies most interested in projects like Open Compute because they see the future in their own data centers.

 

On the other hand, we might argue that companies that use IT less aggressively would be more likely to take advantage of public cloud. The argument here would be that, since they run fewer servers, their internal costs are higher on a per-server basis (they are less efficient because of lower scale) so their apparent savings per server would be higher. This is probably true, but they would also see savings *as a percentage of profit* even lower and less material. Better savings on a per unit basis, but perhaps even lower down the CIO / CFO’s priority list on a magnitude-of-impact basis.

 

Another common argument toward public cloud is “well, of course the legacy stuff is stuck, but the new stuff will go to the cloud.” This may be true, and there are obvious examples of this happening, but I don’t think it’s any more of an iron clad argument than it’s more general cousin.

 

Moving some workloads to the cloud while maintaining core systems in house adds complexity and almost as much perceived risk as moving everything, but for much lower apparent savings (How much would that bank I mentioned save by putting 100 machines on AWS?). This will certainly happen, especially for discrete workloads that are time-variant, but I’m not convinced that moving all new workloads to AWS is anyone’s low energy state.

 

I’ll caveat all of this with a “who knows?” and a shrug. However, if you’re confused as to why enterprises are taking so long to adopt public cloud, it might not be because they are stupid, it might just be that the risk relative to the savings isn’t enough to drive the behavior you were expecting (or depending on).

 

Simon, what did I get wrong?  Read more on the home page

 

I think Simon bases his argument on something like the Rational Economic Man theory of the enterprise. Or, more specifically, the Rational Economic CFO. If the costs of a service provider are destined to be lower than the costs of internally-operated alternatives, and your CFO is rational (most tend to be), then the conclusion is foregone.

 

And of course, costs are going down just as they are predicted to. Look at this post by Avi Deitcher, Does Amazon’s Web Services Pricing Follow Moore’s Law? I think the question posed in the title has a fairly obvious answer. No. Services aren’t just silicon, they include all manner of linear terms, like labor, so the price decreases will almost certainly be slower than Moore’s law, but his analysis of the costs of a modestly sized AWS solution and in-house competition is really useful. 

 

Not only is AWS’ price dropping fast (56% in three years), but it’s significantly cheaper than building and operating a platform in house. Avi does the math for 600 instances over three years and finds that the cost for AWS would be $1.1M (I don’t think this number considers out-year price decreases) vs. $2.3M for DIY. You’re mileage may vary, but these numbers are a nice starting point for further discussion.

 

These results raise an interesting question, if the numbers are so compelling, why did Walmart just reveal that they are building a ginormous private cloud? Why would anyone?

 

Let’s look at some numbers. There is a large east coast bank that has about 120,000 server images. Let’s assume to simplify things that those aren’t just virtual images but map to hardware nearly one to one. 

 

I’m almost certain that BigBank's costs aren’t as high per unit as 600 Corp's. At over 100,000 instances they’ll experience at least some of the scaling benefits that AWS itself has. Rather than do a careful estimate, let’s just assume that their efficiency is half way between AWS and 600 Corp. If that were the case, their cost to buy, operate, and manage those servers might look like: ($1.1M + $2.3M)/2 * 120,000/600 ~ $340M over three years. I’ve seen it reported that they have 4000 developers and a total annual IT budget of $750M so these numbers seem at least reasonable.

 

So, if Rational CFO makes big bank switch everything to AWS, and ignoring switching costs for now, what will they save?

 

$340M - $1.1*120,000/600 ~ $120M in savings over three years, or about $40M per year. Again, this leaves out transition costs, and it also ignores out-year AWS price decreases, but it’s probably in the ball park.

 

$40M annually is a lot of money and no CFO would ignore it, rational or not. But total revenues at this company are $34B with profits of $10B/year. So, the incremental benefit of moving all compute to AWS is only .4% of profit. Again, that’s not nothing, but it’s not a top-line driver of business results.

 

Interestingly, even if AWS were to continue improving its cost advantage through a combination of increasing scale and Moore’s Law, all the way to free, a move would still only improve this company’s bottom line by .8% annually. 

 

I think this is the point that some public cloud proponents miss. We are talking about decisions that at least feel like high risk and they don’t seem to produce the material levels of ROI necessary to give up control.

 

This is not unlike the choices consumers make every day when they buy a car and choose the convenience of an SUV over the fuel economy of alternatives. For many people, the incremental fuel cost just isn’t that big of a deal in the context of their total household budget. If they do choose not to go with an SUV it’s often because of other concerns.

 

I think private cloud will be around, at least in very large enterprises, for a long time and for similar reasons. The control the CIO (and general counsel) seeks will trump the narrower interests of Rational Economic CFO. And I don’t see lots of CIO’s taking huge risks and kicking off expensive five year transition plans to improve profitability by .4%.

 

Two more thoughts before I wrap this up.

 

It’s possible that the meta-trend of corporate digitization (meaning, IT has a front end business enabler rather than just  back end record keeper) will make IT costs a more material component of a lot of businesses. This might change the character of an analysis like this for some businesses, however, I used a bank as my example, and they are already using IT aggressively at the front end of the business and have high IT costs relative to revenues. These guys have the most to gain by switching, and so far, aren’t. In fact, so far they are the kinds of companies most interested in projects like Open Compute because they see the future in their own data centers.

 

On the other hand, we might argue that companies that use IT less aggressively would be more likely to take advantage of public cloud. The argument here would be that, since they run fewer servers, their internal costs are higher on a per-server basis (they are less efficient because of lower scale) so their apparent savings per server would be higher. This is probably true, but they would also see savings *as a percentage of profit* even lower and less material. Better savings on a per unit basis, but perhaps even lower down the CIO / CFO’s priority list on a magnitude-of-impact basis.

 

Another common argument toward public cloud is “well, of course the legacy stuff is stuck, but the new stuff will go to the cloud.” This may be true, and there are obvious examples of this happening, but I don’t think it’s any more of an iron clad argument than it’s more general cousin.

 

Moving some workloads to the cloud while maintaining core systems in house adds complexity and almost as much perceived risk as moving everything, but for much lower apparent savings (How much would that bank I mentioned save by putting 100 machines on AWS?). This will certainly happen, especially for discrete workloads that are time-variant, but I’m not convinced that moving all new workloads to AWS is anyone’s low energy state.

 

I’ll caveat all of this with a “who knows?” and a shrug. However, if you’re confused as to why enterprises are taking so long to adopt public cloud, it might not be because they are stupid, it might just be that the risk relative to the savings isn’t enough to drive the behavior you were expecting (or depending on).

 

Simon, what did I get wrong?  Read more on the home page

In Cyberwar, Coding is the New Maneuver

There is a lot of talk about how agility in IT systems is necessary to "out turn" our adversaries in modern conflict. The Army's Future Combat System may end up putting the theory to the greatest test if it successfully fields smaller more lightly armored vehicles and by banking on better information to be the compensating force multiplier. Those kinds of trade-off bets haven't always worked out well in the past, so the Army is really putting its money where its mouth is. The Air Force says IT agility is important too, but isn't buying smaller slower cheaper less maneuverable jets that will rely on better information so it's hard to tell if they really believe it (that was said tongue in cheek, please don't send me hate mail). The reality is that IT systems in the DoD today manifest very little agility. They are slow to build, slow to respond to changing requirements, and are frequently still integrated in a manner that makes for an incredibly brittle enterprise. This may not be the end of the world when your physical assets can still outperform everyone else's but what about in the cyber domain? Is it ok there? In cyber warfare coding is the new maneuver. Cyber warfare won't be won by attrition (though I suppose there are elements of cyber warfare that are analogous to attrition), it will be won at least in part when we can sense an attack, counter it, find a vulnerability, and strike back faster than our adversary can react. Some of this "maneuver" will be through the effective and creative use of existing tools, and some will require that we very rapidly develop new software capabilities and tools to exploit a particular vulnerability or to provide defense against an enemy exploit. Maybe this "coding is maneuver" analogy is a bit of a stretch; however, I think the underlying idea is valid: that in the cyber domain technology agility will matter more because there are no compensating physical assets. In this domain code and the ability of the people using it is sort of equivalent to a ship and a well trained crew in the Maritime domain. I don't think it is too much of a stretch from there to say that being able to quickly modify the code / tools is similar to maneuver in the effect it has on an enemy. Imagine a world where an armored maneuver commander would have to get to Milestone B before he could conduct a "thunder run," or one where an Air Operations Center would have to draft an RFP and obtain approval before it could dispatch a mission package to a deep target. It sounds silly, but a cyber domain commander working under the constraints of our current system for software acquisition might feel similarly constrained.

DISA CONFERENCE NOTES

I must say that the annual DISA conference this week in Nashville exceeded my expectations. It was a great opportunity to meet people, network, and get a sense for the agency's pains and initiatives. A good portion of the DISA leadership was making itself available on the floor and in the halls for conversation and discussion, and the relatively compact venue in Nashville worked to enhance the serendipitous pinball collision effect.

The keynote speeches effectlively laid out the challenges faced by the agency - the need for cultural change, the need to unbind themselves from what they think the rules say (instead of what they really say), get "the middle" to evolve through incentives and mindset, and other related themes. The "intransigence of the middle" point was on display throughout the event; hallway conversations after each keynote would be full of overheard snippets like "I'd love to do that but the security/testing/whatever people would never allow it" or "I'd love to do that but the policy/rule/process won't permit it." One has to be careful with these kinds of pronouncements though; often once something is named as a problem, the problem itself is somehow reinforced as the now called out "problems" dig in their heels further.

If I had one beef with the keynote speeches it is that I think they tend to be too sugarcoated to create the kind of urgency that is really needed for cultural change. The speeches were all on the "everything is great and moving forward according to plan" variety. The focus is on speed, sharing, and getting out of the box but the culture as it stands is simply too unforgiving of failure and squelches risk taking as a result. Instead of a keynote of "here's the strategy and here are the successes since last year" I would love to have heard a bit more unvarnished "here's the strategy, here are the successes, and here is where we are still too slow and too rigid..." The right balance between unvarnished self-assessment and forgiveness for failure. In fairness, maybe public self-flaggelation at an annual conference isn't the right mechanism.

Maybe what is needed is a DISA version of Bill Gate's Internet Tidal Wave memo (note to Ray Ozzie: great speech until you got to the open source question / response. Might be time for a Ray Ozzie Open Source Tidal Wave memo). If DISA were a company the urgency necessary to painfully but quickly drive cultural change would come from waning revenues, failing product lines, and loss of confidence on the Street. That mechanism doesn't work here. So maybe Lt. Gen. Croom can write a memo to the agency, wait, scratch that.... Maybe Lt. Gen. Croom can do a video for the agency in which he describes the impact of the agency's failure to get important programs like NECC and NCES (for example) done more quickly, in a more agile way, and more cost effectively. How those failures to be fast, if not corrected, will erode the agency's long term viability and more importantly, are impacting the warfighter's ability to be effective. Then interview warfighters up and down the chain of command and have them weigh in on what it means to them.

What I did find to be particularly refreshing was the apparent openness among the senior leadership of the organization. Lt. Gen. Croom has obviously built the kind of intellectually open environment among his staff where they feel like they can speak their minds (as evidenced by his CTO advocating loudly for open source during the Q+A after the keynote - calling out his boss directly, if only jokingly). I'm sure this openness will pay tremendous dividends during the ongoing change management process as the tone set at the top will filter through the entire organization's culture. (By the way, probably 5 of 7 questions after the keynotes were about open source. It was unexpected how frequently it came up).

It was surprising however, in the context of that sense of openness, to have to sign an NDA when I picked up my badge. Who signs an NDA to attend a conference? I recall that it said something about protecting proprietary IP and "sensitive information" but I'm not exactly sure what I promised to do since I wasn't offered a copy to keep after I signed it. Proprietary is easy, it is usually marked, but I'm less certain how to evalute what would be considered sensitive. Hopefully this isn't.

You know, it's kind of strange. The leadership at DISA has sent the message over and over again that they want an organization that will emulate the creativity, innovation and operational excellence of west coast firms like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo. But if you attend a west coast conference like O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit there will be at least 100 people in the front rows real time blogging the event. People with laptops throughout the event will be conversing in chat rooms as the event unfolds to discuss the major themes etc., as the presentations are being given. Many more people will blog more thoughtful posts after the fact to continue the discussions started during the event. And finally, people will participate in sharing information, ideas and contact info before, during, and after the event via a wiki set up for the event. An altogether invigorating and refreshing set of interactions. The DISA conference in contrast asks you to sign an NDA and there is no wireless available anywhere in the building; but it wouldn't matter because there isn't a laptop in site. The cultural divide is palpable but hopefully not unbridgable. More on the home page

The keynote speeches effectlively laid out the challenges faced by the agency - the need for cultural change, the need to unbind themselves from what they think the rules say (instead of what they really say), get "the middle" to evolve through incentives and mindset, and other related themes. The "intransigence of the middle" point was on display throughout the event; hallway conversations after each keynote would be full of overheard snippets like "I'd love to do that but the security/testing/whatever people would never allow it" or "I'd love to do that but the policy/rule/process won't permit it." One has to be careful with these kinds of pronouncements though; often once something is named as a problem, the problem itself is somehow reinforced as the now called out "problems" dig in their heels further.

If I had one beef with the keynote speeches it is that I think they tend to be too sugarcoated to create the kind of urgency that is really needed for cultural change. The speeches were all on the "everything is great and moving forward according to plan" variety. The focus is on speed, sharing, and getting out of the box but the culture as it stands is simply too unforgiving of failure and squelches risk taking as a result. Instead of a keynote of "here's the strategy and here are the successes since last year" I would love to have heard a bit more unvarnished "here's the strategy, here are the successes, and here is where we are still too slow and too rigid..." The right balance between unvarnished self-assessment and forgiveness for failure. In fairness, maybe public self-flaggelation at an annual conference isn't the right mechanism.

Maybe what is needed is a DISA version of Bill Gate's Internet Tidal Wave memo (note to Ray Ozzie: great speech until you got to the open source question / response. Might be time for a Ray Ozzie Open Source Tidal Wave memo). If DISA were a company the urgency necessary to painfully but quickly drive cultural change would come from waning revenues, failing product lines, and loss of confidence on the Street. That mechanism doesn't work here. So maybe Lt. Gen. Croom can write a memo to the agency, wait, scratch that.... Maybe Lt. Gen. Croom can do a video for the agency in which he describes the impact of the agency's failure to get important programs like NECC and NCES (for example) done more quickly, in a more agile way, and more cost effectively. How those failures to be fast, if not corrected, will erode the agency's long term viability and more importantly, are impacting the warfighter's ability to be effective. Then interview warfighters up and down the chain of command and have them weigh in on what it means to them.

What I did find to be particularly refreshing was the apparent openness among the senior leadership of the organization. Lt. Gen. Croom has obviously built the kind of intellectually open environment among his staff where they feel like they can speak their minds (as evidenced by his CTO advocating loudly for open source during the Q+A after the keynote - calling out his boss directly, if only jokingly). I'm sure this openness will pay tremendous dividends during the ongoing change management process as the tone set at the top will filter through the entire organization's culture. (By the way, probably 5 of 7 questions after the keynotes were about open source. It was unexpected how frequently it came up).

It was surprising however, in the context of that sense of openness, to have to sign an NDA when I picked up my badge. Who signs an NDA to attend a conference? I recall that it said something about protecting proprietary IP and "sensitive information" but I'm not exactly sure what I promised to do since I wasn't offered a copy to keep after I signed it. Proprietary is easy, it is usually marked, but I'm less certain how to evalute what would be considered sensitive. Hopefully this isn't.

You know, it's kind of strange. The leadership at DISA has sent the message over and over again that they want an organization that will emulate the creativity, innovation and operational excellence of west coast firms like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo. But if you attend a west coast conference like O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit there will be at least 100 people in the front rows real time blogging the event. People with laptops throughout the event will be conversing in chat rooms as the event unfolds to discuss the major themes etc., as the presentations are being given. Many more people will blog more thoughtful posts after the fact to continue the discussions started during the event. And finally, people will participate in sharing information, ideas and contact info before, during, and after the event via a wiki set up for the event. An altogether invigorating and refreshing set of interactions. The DISA conference in contrast asks you to sign an NDA and there is no wireless available anywhere in the building; but it wouldn't matter because there isn't a laptop in site. The cultural divide is palpable but hopefully not unbridgable. More on the home page