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February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

The likelihood of Second Life having a long-term impact on the enterprise may appear virtually nonexistent, but consider this: Education, collaboration, and networking -- three productivity mandates for today's enterprise -- are fast catching on in the virtual world.

Before laughing and glancing sideways at your well-worn copy of Snow Crash, know that even old-guard institutions such as Harvard University have a Second Life presence, with virtual campuses where learning, discussion, and content creation occur.

Dobbs Island, with tradeshow booths to the left and, in the distance, the amphitheatre where conferences are held.

Training, for one, has real ROI potential in Second Life, as virtual worlds expose participants to RL (real life) learning scenarios that would otherwise be too expensive or dangerous to explore. Take dealing with a pandemic flu, for example. Medical students are already tapping virtual worlds to learn how best to respond. No need to pay for a trip to a foreign country to learn language basics. Virtual immersive language study allows you to travel to worlds where only that language is spoken, with all signs and advertisements written in the language being learned.

Collaboration and networking are two other sweetspots for companies to make use of virtual worlds. Tech heavy hitters such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell, and Microsoft are already tapping Second Life as a platform for development, conferences, and forums. IBM, which has established a Business Center in Second Life, boasts nearly 4,000 employees with Second Life avatars to date, with about 1,000 routinely conducting company business inside Second Life.

But what of the many technologies already serving companies' collaboration, networking, and training needs? How can virtual worlds find a long-term place in the mix?

"The 3D aspects and the ability to put a whole group of people in the same 'space' at a distance, where everyone can hear everyone else as you would in a real hall or space, gives SL an advantage over other social networking systems, chat systems, or conference calls," says Todd Cochrane, of the Wellington Institute of Technology in New Zealand. "People seem to be more engaged."

Conference room designed by Todd Cochrane, where one can watch Windows Vista training clips (provided by ClipTraining.com).

And that is the immeasurable edge virtual worlds may have over traditional modes of training and collaboration: user engagement. Perhaps more so, as Generation Y grows up with virtual technologies such as Second Life.

Of course, anonymity, which people tend to prefer in the virtual world, hinders collaboration carryover into the real world. Moreover, plugging in to Second Life for business-grade collaboration has other detractors, such as quality of experience (SL is consistently slowing down and crashing for a variety of reasons), privacy (oftentimes, depending on the type of conversation, others can “hear” you), and security. But as the technology matures, these issues will no doubt be addressed.

Either way, crackpot or not, tapping virtual worlds such as Second Life in a corporate setting has already drawn significant interest.

“Once more we have the very strong feeling that [Second Life] will have a huge impact on business, society and our personal lives, although none of us can quite predict what that impact will be," Irving Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology and visiting professor of engineering systems at MIT, wrote in a blog over a year ago. "It will be fascinating to see where this ride takes us in the future."

-- J. Peter Bruzzese

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Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:08 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Enterprise supercomputing

A modern, global enterprise is incredibly complex. Balancing materials availability forecasts with predicted sales trends and seasonal marketing strategies can seem like pure wizardry. But what if you had some help, in the form of a massive electronic brain that could handle the number-crunching for you?

Until recently, supercomputers were the exclusive domain of large universities and government research labs. Massive, arcane, and impossibly expensive, they required operational and maintenance skills far beyond the capabilities of your average enterprise IT department. But new developments in HPC (high-performance computing) technology are putting supercomputer-level performance within the enterprise's reach. The only question is, does the enterprise have use for it?

The HPC field has changed dramatically over the last decade. Today, distributed-processing software allows even desktop PCs to join compute clusters and crunch numbers in their idle moments. Networked parallel processing technology makes it possible to build supercomputer-class systems from mainstream, off-the-shelf hardware and open source software. And in the past few years, companies such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have begun offering time-shared HPC services at affordable rates.

This is great news for the oil and gas, finance, and insurance industries, which have long relied on HPC for intensive calculations and complex mathematical modeling. But for more typical enterprises, supercomputing technology remains a tough sell. The promise is enticing, but the hurdles to overcome call into question the number of businesses that realistically need to perform calculations on the order of those necessary to predict global weather patterns or model the stock market.

And cost is not the only barrier to entry for HPC. Before any massively parallel supercomputing application can run, it first needs a data set to process. As any IT manager can attest, enterprise data is too often scattered throughout multiple, disparate systems, each with its own interface and data formats. As the growing market for data integration and SOA (service-oriented architecture) technology attests, unifying this data is no easy task. Relying on it for serious computational modeling is out of the question.

So, while raw processing power may be available and affordable like never before, don’t expect HPC to become a line item on your budget anytime soon. For most enterprise IT departments, those dollars will be better spent on traditional expenditures such as middleware and data warehousing, leaving mass-market supercomputing relegated to the category of the possible, but impractical.

-- Neil McAllister

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:07 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Direct brain interfaces

Ready to think away that backlog of IT tasks to a more manageable stack? Or to get a handle on the hot new IT skill without lifting a finger? If scientists are successful, such power could be within IT’s grasp, as the computers of the future will plug directly into your brain.

Technological telepathy has been the stuff of science fiction for years. In the 1957 film Forbidden Planet, for example, alien machines could bring any thought to life, while characters in the more recent Matrix trilogy bypassed years of tedious education via instant brain uploads. Although such tricks are a ways off, experimental brain-computer interfaces exist today.

For now, the goal of most direct brain interface research is to develop assistive technologies for the physically disabled. Researchers at Brown University, for example, have created a brain implant that allows quadriplegic patients to move a mouse cursor around a computer screen using thought alone. And in a separate experiment conducted at Boston University, scientists have been able to recreate audible sounds by processing data gathered from the speech centers of the brain of a paralyzed man, with what they claim is 80 percent accuracy.

Mind reading it isn’t -- not yet, anyway. But our understanding of the electrical workings of the brain has advanced so rapidly in recent years that we’ve scarcely had time to ponder the ethical questions raised by these new technologies, let alone which enterprise tasks we’d dream of gearing them toward.

Few would argue against using high tech to enhance the quality of life of the disabled; cochlear implants that interface directly with auditory nerves, for example, are now routinely used to treat total deafness. But what if similar technology could be used to enhance the hearing of normal, healthy people to superhuman levels? What if future implants could enhance cognition using microprocessors, to create a kind of “human calculator”? Would it be moral to plug a super-calculating admin into a server to monitor financial transactions? These and similar questions have spawned an entire, new field of philosophy, which New York Times columnist William Safire has dubbed "neuroethics."

And that’s to say nothing of the implications should we ever gain the ability to plug our brains directly into the Internet. Imagine waking up in the morning to a headful of spam or finding out that your “little black book” has been phished by the person sitting next to you on the subway.

Advancing the direct brain technology to the point of feasibility in corporate settings is one thing. Governance and privacy concerns within and outside the corporate context are quite another. Don’t expect to be thinking away your IT to-do list anytime soon.

-- Neil McAllister

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:06 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: The $100 laptop

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program hasn't fared as well as its founders may have hoped. Not only did the group considerably overshoot its targeted $100 price tag; it's been plagued with manufacturing problems and commercial competition.

That doesn't mean the dream of a sub-$100, low-power laptop is unachievable. In some ways, the OLPC's XO serves as an “alpha” model of where the PC market could head -- and not just in the developing world. In fact, the company's former CTO sees a future for low-cost, highly power-efficient machines in the commercial market.

And the more you look at the cost of outfitting enterprise end-users with computing resources beyond their needs, the less crackpot leaning on OLPC-like laptops in the enterprise will one day seem -- especially in terms of energy efficiency.

These days, a solid, all-purpose laptop averages $1,440, yet the machines pack far more power than the average end-user requires -- as much as 80 to 90 percent more. Thus, while the user takes advantage of just 10 to 20 percent of a system's power, the machine continues to draw upwards of 280 watts of energy. Beyond cutting down on the laptop’s battery life, those wasted watts translate to wasted dollars in powering the system -- and to cool rooms where PCs congregate.

The OLPC XO, on the other hand, was designed with power-efficiency in mind. Initially targeted at users with spotty access to electricity, these babies can run on less than two watts of power, resulting in an estimated battery life of 21 hours.

The tradeoff for low energy consumption is a less-powerful CPU. Yet the trend toward thin clients in the enterprise is fast proving that the average end-user can get along just fine, productivity-wise, with an inexpensive commodity processor (the XO comes with 433MHz chip) -- especially if the system isn't bogged down with a fat OS platform and applications. Thanks to the evolution of Web services, such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com, lightweight desktop apps can be supplemented or replaced, as appropriate, with a browser and ubiquitous Internet access.

Meanwhile on the platform side, even Microsoft, king of the fat OS, must foresee a future of lightweight PCs, as it is working to trim the excess code from Windows to match sleeker Linux alternatives.

They may look like toys today, but today’s “$100 laptops” may very well serve as prototypes for a significant portion of tomorrow’s enterprise computing paradigm, especially as the various trends and cost constraints of delivering apps to end-users specialize and evolve and specialize. After all, designing technology in support of policy -- as was the case with the OLPC -- should catch on in the corporate world as well, especially as companies come to realize that centering purchasing policies around energy efficiency just makes sense.

-- Ted Samson

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:05 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Wireless power

Ever since Nikola Tesla lit bulbs on his grounds without wires, the promise of wireless power has stirred hope and interest, but little success. Today, with the wide array of electronic devices that require power, the promise of powering the enterprise through the air seems as crackpot as it is unlikely.

Yet practical implementations of wireless power have emerged in the past few years, including the induction charging of an electric toothbrush and wireless extension cords ThinkGeek introduced in 2006 -- on April Fool's Day.

In fact, a few companies are actively pursuing wireless power, including Splashpower and Powercast.

Splashpower has developed charging systems using magnetic induction. Placing enabled devices on the charging station will charge the device without mechanical connection. Just as with that toothbrush, power in the charging platform creates an electro-magnetic field that effectively transmits power to the embedded module in the device.

Powercast has taken a different approach, as reflected in the first commercial implementation of its technology: an LED-lit wireless Christmas tree created with Philips and sold last Christmas season in the high-end Frontgate catalog.

Rather than tapping induction, Powercast uses RF (radio frequency) transmissions with high-efficiency transmitters and receivers to broadcast power to the devices. Powercast is targeting a broad range of devices, including such widely varying items as hearing aids, biological weapons sensors, and wireless headsets.

Tesla's early patents on wireless transmission of power were awarded in 1900. His diagrams show inductive coils that can transmit large amounts of power over great distances. Carrying out his invention on an industrial scale, he said, would result in electricity for cities from places where cheaper power was attainable. Given the rising cost of energy, the ability to feed a datacenter with power from a distant, cheap source such as a hydroelectric dam would have considerable impact on the enterprise.

In June 2007, a team from MIT’s Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies experimentally demonstrated wireless power using magnetically coupled resonances. Using resonance, the team demonstrated a much more efficient transmission of power over distance than is typical. Of course, the team's devices are a bit on the bulky side, but the demonstration of the concept shows promise.

While we have yet to see the full fruition of Tesla's brilliant vision, some early work is beginning to demonstrate that there may, in fact, be some hope for moving power without wires. And hopefully without dire health consequences created by the interaction of human beings with it.

-- Stephen Sven Hultquist

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:04 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Pervasive computing

How many times have you missed an important phone call because you were in a meeting? Or wasted 15 minutes searching the building for one of your co-workers? Or sent an important job to the printer, only find that it’s out of toner? Fear not; top technology minds are at work on these problems, and more.

Imagine a meeting room that records the identities of everyone who enters it and updates an availability database, allowing urgent calls to be routed accordingly. Every office could do the same, making it possible to track down anyone, anywhere in the building. Meanwhile, your networked printer could monitor its own toner levels and compare them to past usage patterns, then use its internal Internet connection to place an order for replacement toner when the time is right. With automation like this, your office could be running like clockwork in no time.

Welcome to pervasive computing, a future that promises a chip in every pot and a smart card in every garage. Instead of a desktop PC that acts as the hub for your digital needs, pervasive computing envisions a seamless web of embedded devices, all working behind the scenes to track and manage your day-to-day tasks.

In a fully pervasive computing world, even the concept of a digital device begins to blur. Computers won’t be limited to metal boxes, glowing screens, and arcane UIs. Instead, they’ll be hidden away in your clothes, your wallet, and your office walls.

It sounds like something out of the Jetsons, and indeed, pervasive computing is an idea almost as old as the personal computer itself. But it may be closer than you think. Historians credit Mark Weiser of Xerox Parc with inventing it in the 1980s, and since then, researchers at the likes of HP, IBM, and MIT’s Media Lab have built on Weiser’s work. Recent years have already seen such innovations as computerized car locks and RFID-enabled passports, for example.

But just because we can build it doesn’t mean we should. Ignore the privacy implications for now. In today’s economy, what company would be willing to pay for it? Building a mesh of tiny microprocessors into everyday objects is a frivolous expense compared with the laundry list of tasks facing today’s cash-strapped IT departments. After all, just how hard is it to order printer toner, really?

-- Neil McAllister

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:03 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Optical computing

For years, chipmakers have bumped against the ceiling of Moore’s Law. Current fabrication techniques can’t keep CPU speeds climbing at the meteoric rates of decades past. Because of this, today’s advances focus on multiple cores and power savings, rather than raw speed. But what if there was a new way to build chips -- one that would accelerate processing literally to the speed of light?

Using light to turbocharge data transfer is not new. SANs have benefited from high-speed fiber-optic links for years, and U.S. telecommunications providers have begun using similar technology to offer customers Internet bandwidth comparable to that of a dedicated LAN.

Building entire computers with optical circuitry would certainly provide significant advantages. First, particles of light, aka photons, travel much faster than electrons. Perhaps more importantly, they do not radiate energy the way electrons do, even at high frequencies. Thus, not only would purely optical chips outperform anything previously known, the cooling problems that plague electronic microprocessors would virtually disappear.

It’s no surprise, then, that scientists have pursued optical computing for decades. For many years, their efforts yielded only purpose-built devices suited to specialized tasks. Then, in 1993, researchers at the University of Colorado announced the first experimental general-purpose optical computer. Although the prototype proved optical computing was technically feasible, a practical design with real-world applications remains elusive.

For starters, the Colorado device could move only one photon at a time -- unlike traditional supercomputers, which process thousands of operations simultaneously. Worse, it relied on large bursts of photons to control the individual photons that made up its data, making the computer extremely energy-inefficient.

But the quest isn’t over. In 2007, the Lukin Group at Harvard announced an optical circuit that needed a single photon to operate. Still, 15 years after the University of Colorado experiment, we’re no closer to optical computers for mainstream use, let alone a working prototype that bests an ordinary computer. Photon-powered processing may yet be in your future, but you just might have to travel at the speed of light to get there.

-- Neil McAllister

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:02 AM

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Nanotechnology

No technology has the potential to revolutionized enterprise computing like nanotechology -- at least that's the impression given by the breadth and intensity of experiments in going small these days. Practical or not, nearly every corner of the enterprise stockyard is being injected with nanotech -- displays, computers, even light bulbs. In fact, today I took nanotech to the slopes, skiing on Sterling skis with a "nano-carbon" base from World Cup technology.

But is there enough substance beneath the science to move nanotechnology beyond crackpot and into the enterprise? The answer, of course, depends where you look.

Nanotech and quantum computing are closely related, but emerging nanotechnologies for storage, batteries, and even chip cooling are showing promise, at least in the labs.

Arizona State University’s Center for Applied Nanoionics (CANi) has developed insight into nanostorage by examining two leading nanotech solutions simultaneously: tapping special materials and switching from a charge-based to a resistance-based framework.

Published in the October 2007 issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices under the title "Bipolar and Unipolar Resistive Switching in Cu-doped SiO2," the concept uses materials already common to chip design (silicon dioxide and copper) but does so in a new way. By doping the silicon dioxide with the copper, the technology creates a leap in memory, according to Michael Kozicki, director of CANi.

"Because it is so low energy, we can pack a lot of memory and not drain battery power; and it’s not volatile -- you can switch everything off and retain information," Kozicki says. "What makes this significant is that we are using materials that are already in use in the semiconductor industry to create a component that’s never been thought of before."

As the insatiable appetite for computational power in ever-increasing types of devices increases, so will the need for low-power, abundant storage. Although not likely to emerge in commercial applications in the next year or two, nanostorage is a research area that shows significant promise.

Of course, powering these devices is another issue -- and another area where nanotechnology may come to the rescue.

In December, Stanford announced a breakthrough in lithium ion (Li-on) energy storage using silicon nanowires that will increase the potential storage of Li-on batteries nearly tenfold, according to Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and the leader of the research team.

Li-on battery capacities are limited by the lithium that can be held in the battery's anode. Typically, anodes are carbon, but silicon can be used for much higher capacity. However, silicon has a drawback: It swells as it absorbs the lithium during charging and shrinks during discharge. This expand/contract cycle causes the silicon to break down over time, degrading the battery. Yi Cui and his team used silicon nanowires instead. The team found that although the nanowires expand four times their normal size during charging, they do not fracture while discharging.

This technology could emerge on the market relatively soon, especially if an established battery firm partners with the Stanford team.

With all this increased computing power comes an increase in heat, and a need to dissipate it. Researchers at Birck Nanotechnology Center in Discovery Park at Purdue have approached this problem in a new way, growing carbon nanotubes on top of microprocessor chips, allowing them to provide heat conduction away from the computational core. Described by the researchers as a "Velcro-like nanocarpet," the collection of tubes pulls heat away from the chip and into the heat sink for dissipation.

Performance, capacity, and efficiency have long been the markers of worthwhile ingenuity in the enterprise. And nanotech is aiming to deliver all three. While these solutions are not imminent, their emergence is likely to change the face of the enterprise as they find practical means for integrating with emergin computing technologies.

-- Stephen Sven Hultquist

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 18, 2008 03:01 AM

February 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Quantum cryptography redux

As Peter Wayner notes in the quantum cryptography segment of "12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise," the main draw of the technology is that it gives the recipient of a message the ability to detect whether any eavesdropping has occurred en route.

QKD (quantum key distribution), the technology behind quantum cryptography, employs lasers to encode each bit of an AES key with a single photon of light. Ensuring that a laser generates a single photon for each bit, however, is no trivial matter. And if a second photon is emitted, one could be decrypted without detection.

Two projects unveiled at Nano Tech 2007 in Tokyo aim to tackle this hurdle, as shown on this Nano Tech conference roundup video from IDGNS Tokyo.

The first, Toshiba's Quantum Crypto System, uses a lower-power laser to transmit decoy photons in a second stream to increase the probability of eavesdropping detection, according to Andrew Shields, group leader of the quantum interaction group at Toshiba Research Europe.

Meanwhile, Fuijitsu demonstrated at the conference a laser it claims can reliably generate a single photon every time. According to Kazuya Takemoto, of Fujitsu's nanotechnology research center, the ensured security of this methodology should appeal to the financial, health care, and military sectors.

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 28, 2007 11:33 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Solid-state drives

Solid-state storage devices — both RAM-based and NAND (Not And) flash-based — have held promise as worthwhile alternatives to conventional disk drives for some time despite the healthy dose of skepticism they inspire. By no means new, they will be integrated into IT only when the technologies fulfill their potential and go mainstream.

Volatility and cost have been the Achilles' heel of external RAM-based devices for the past decade. Most come equipped with standard DIMMs, batteries, and possibly hard drives, all connected to a SCSI bus. And the more advanced models can run without power long enough to move data residing on the RAM to the internal disks, ensuring nothing is lost. Extremely expensive, the devices promise speed advantages that, until recently, were losing ground to faster SCSI and SAS drives. Recent advances, however, suggest RAM-based storage devices may pay off eventually.

As for flash-based solid-state devices, early problems — such as slow write speeds and a finite number of writes per sector — persist. Advances in flash technology, though, have reduced these negatives. NAND-based devices are now being introduced in sizes that make them feasible for use in high-end laptops and, presumably, servers. Samsung's latest offerings include 32GB and 64GB SSD (solid-state disk) drives with IDE and SATA interfaces. At $1,800 for the 32GB version, they're certainly not cheap, but as volume increases, pricing will come down. These drives aren't nearly the speed demons their RAM-based counterparts are, but their read latency is significantly faster than that of standard hard drives.

The state of the solid-state art may not be ready for widespread enterprise adoption yet, but it’s certainly closer than skeptics think.

-- Paul Venezia

What do you think of the viability of solid-state drives for the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: DC power

The warm, humming bricks that convert AC from the wall to the DC used by electronics are finally drawing some much deserved attention — from datacenter engineers hoping to save money by wasting less energy. The waste must often be paid for twice: first to power equipment, then to run the air conditioner to remove the heat produced. One solution is to create a central power supply that distributes pure DC current to rack-mounted computers. But will cutting out converters catch on, or is the buzz surrounding DC to the datacenter destined to fizzle?

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have built a prototype rack filled with computers that run directly off 380-volt DC. Bill Tschudi, principal investigator at the lab, says that the system uses 15 percent less power than do servers equipped with today's most efficient power supplies — and that there can be even greater savings when replacing the older models still in use in most enterprises. If the server room requires cooling, as it does everywhere except in northern regions in the winter, the savings can double, because the air-conditioning bill also can be cut by 15 percent.

Others are working on bringing additional DC savings to the enterprise. Nextek Power, for instance, is building a system that integrates the traditional power grid, rooftop solar panels, and computer hardware using DC power. Choosing this standard avoids the inefficiencies of converting the DC produced by the panels to AC, then back to DC when it reaches the computers.

"It's a big opportunity, because we've shown that there's big energy savings," Tschudi says of the prospects of DC. "And it's also got more reliability because there are fewer points of failure."

Cost savings? Reliability? The prospects for DC to the datacenter are looking up.

-- Peter Wayner

What do you think of DC Power's prospects for the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Total information awareness

When the DoD's Information Awareness Office rolled out its high-tech scheme to track down terrorists in 2002, the program had all the hallmarks of a government boondoggle, invoking imagined — and sometimes unimaginable — future technologies to solve an immediate problem.

First, there was the hyperbolic, Orwellian name, Total Information Awareness (TIA); then there was the project leader, convicted Iran-Contra felon Rear Admiral John Poindexter. And finally there was the bloated goal: To aggregate, store, and analyze public and private data on an unimaginably massive scale, applying a predictive model that would correlate past activities to predict future acts. Minority Report, anyone?

The project eventually got a PR makeover, emerging as "Terrorism Information Awareness." Even so, the idea remained technically far-fetched. To create a system that could scoop up and analyze citizens' -- or foreign nationals' -- credit card transactions, medical records, Web site activity, travel itineraries, e-mails, or anything with an electronic fingerprint, Poindexter called for a "total reinvention of technologies for storing and accessing information." That's the IT equivalent of a Hail Mary pass.
Ultimately, the technical hurdles became moot. Privacy advocates howled, public sentiment turned, and the Feds officially pulled the plug in 2003. Yet for all its sci-fi underpinnings, many of the technologies that constituted TIA aren't as cockamamie as they sound.

For instance, companies such as Teradata offer solutions that can migrate petabytes of data from disparate databases to a massive, integrated data repository, where customers can employ sophisticated data mining. Meanwhile, CallMiner and other speech analytics software enable companies to mine customer phone calls for business intelligence. And although today's predictive analysis tools may not be able to foretell a terrorist attack, they can, for example, analyze the failure rates of mechanical parts so that companies can adjust their inventories accordingly. Not too bad a technical legacy for such a mixed bag of seemingly crackpot notions.

-- Steve Fox

How do you think the TIA legacy will affect the enterprise long term?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Artificial intelligence

Few terms carry as much emotional and technical baggage as AI (artificial intelligence). And while science-fiction authors probe AI's metaphysical boundaries, researchers are producing practical results. We may not have a robot for every task, but we do have cell phones that respond to our voice, data-mining tools that optimize vast industries, and thousands of other measurable ways AI-influenced computing enhances how the enterprise gets work done.

That said, AI itself remains elusive, and the measure of AI's position on the enterprise crackpot scale depends wholly on where you set the goals. Restricted to applying templates and well-defined theorems to sets of data with precise definitions, computers are, after all, becoming very adept at using statistics to make educated guesses about the world. And though speech-recognition software, for example, may not hear the actual message, whatever that means, it does know that a certain pattern of sounds and frequencies almost always corresponds to a particular word.

Greg Hager, a professor of computer science researching machine vision at Johns Hopkins University, says, "For a long time, people thought that the way you would solve those problems was to understand how people would solve those things and then write a program that would do what people do."

That approach has yet to produce much success, but as Hager points out, less sophisticated, more statistical algorithms that take educated guesses are becoming increasingly accurate. Some of the best algorithms for recognizing objects in images, for instance, look for salient features, waiting until enough key points are recognized. Such an algorithm could recognize a Ford sedan from multiple angles but wouldn't be smart enough to use that experience to recognize a Chevrolet.

"It's a paper-thin notion of intelligence," Hager says, but one that's still useful in many basic cases. Expect the enterprise to benefit from similar AI-inspired computing paradigms and technologies in the very near future.

-- Peter Wayner

What sort of AI-inspired technologies do you see impacting the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Quantum computing and quantum cryptography

The manipulation of subatomic particles at the quantum level has raised eyebrows in computer science research departments lately — so much so that several approaches to incorporating quantum mechanics into computing have been launched to varying degrees of success.

The most advanced field of research is quantum cryptography, a bit of a misnomer given that it doesn't rely on anything resembling traditional codes or ciphers. Instead of locking up data in a mathematical safe, the technique encodes messages in the clear by tweaking the quantum properties of photons — a 1 may transform into a photon with "left" spin; a 0, into a photon with "right" spin.

The technique offers security because it is believed to be impossible to detect the spin of a photon without destroying or significantly altering it. So any eavesdropper would annihilate the message or change it enough for the recipient to notice. Two leaders in the field, IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have built working devices and have demonstrated the transmission of photon streams through fiber optics and even the air.
Another technology based on the principles of quantum mechanics, quantum computing, attempts to model computation with quantum states. The field has produced tantalizing theoretical results that show how such a computer instantly could solve some of the most complicated problems such as factoring exceedingly large numbers.

Quantum computing is much further from having an impact in the lab or the enterprise than quantum cryptography. No one has built a particularly useful quantum computer yet, though some researchers have built machines that work with one or two bits. One group recently announced it is building machines that work with problems that take around 1,000 bits to describe. At least that’s a start.

-- Peter Wayner

What's your take on the prospects of quantum computing and cryptography?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Desktop Web applications

When asked whether a full-featured desktop app can be delivered via the Web, most people picture standard HTML forms, possibly with Java or JavaScript thrown in for aesthetics and minimal functionality, and laugh the idea off. But the full-scale apps being built for the browser using scripting languages and Adobe’s Flash and Shockwave development tools will soon prove them wrong.

Flash apps started out as rudimentary games with lackluster input methods and a cartoonlike look and feel. More and more, however, they resemble native apps. Take Gliffy, for instance — a very attractive, stable Flash app that drives like Microsoft Visio, providing full diagramming capabilities in the browser with nothing more than Flash 7 required on the client side.

Another worthwhile example is EyeOS, which looks like a Flash app but is built on PHP and JavaScript and runs off a standard Apache Web server. The array of options and eye candy in EyeOS is staggering for such a new project, clearly pushing the envelope of what such apps can do.

These projects, and others popping up all over the Net, represent the next step in Web app delivery, one that will break free of the HTML form and into interfaces that resemble fat apps. Vendors such as Scalent are already writing their UIs in Flash — and are reaping the benefits of a simpler deployment, arguably greater cross-platform support than Java, and a more seamless, attractive user experience to boot.

As the options diversify and improve, it's a safe bet that Web-based desktop apps will reshape the enterprise soon.

-- Paul Venezia

What's your take on the viability of desktop Web apps for the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Autonomic computing

A datacenter with a mind of its own — or more accurately, a brain stem of its own that would regulate the datacenter equivalents of heart rate, body temperature, and so on. That's the wacky notion IBM proposed when it unveiled its autonomic computing initiative in 2001.

Of the initiative's four pillars, which included self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-protection, it was self-healing — the idea that hardware or software could detect problems and fix itself — that created the most buzz. The idea was that IBM would sprinkle autonomic-computing fairy dust on a host of products, which would then work together to reduce maintenance costs and optimize datacenter utilization without human intervention.

Ask IBM today, and it will hotly deny that autonomic computing is dead. Instead it will point to this product enhancement (DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli) or that standard (Web Services Distributed Management, IT Service Management). But look closely, and you’ll note that products such as IBM's Log and Trace Analyzer have been grandfathered in. How autonomic is that?

The fact is that virtualization has stolen much of the initiative's value-prop thunder: namely, resource optimization and efficient virtual server management. True, that still involves humans. But would any enterprise really want a datacenter with reptilian rule over itself?

-- Eric Knorr

How do you see autonomic computing and similar self-responsive computing initiatives affecting the enterprise long term?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: Semantic Web

Originally designed for document distribution, the Web has yet to realize its full potential for distributing data. XML has done its part. Yet every XML document requires an XML Schema — and relating them isn't easy. Until a viable means for surfacing and linking data is established and adopted, humans will remain the Web's core categorizing agents.

Enter the Semantic Web, an effort spearheaded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999 to extend the Web to enable machines to take this mantle. At the outset, the idea — to transform the Web into something machines can readily analyze — seemed hopelessly academic. Yet with significant public data sets surfacing in Semantic Web form, the once crazy notion now stands to revolutionize how enterprise IT accesses and disseminates data via the Web.

RDF (Resource Description Framework) — the Semantic Web’s standard format for data interchange — extends the URI linking structure of the Web beyond naming the two ends of a link, allowing relationships among all manner of resources to be delineated. But the key to the Semantic Web — and where most people’s eyes glaze over — is its use of ontologies. If specialized communities can successfully create ontologies for classifying data within their domains of expertise, the Semantic Web can knit together these ontologies, which are written using RDF Schemas, SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), and OWL (Web Ontology Language), thereby facilitating machine-based discovery and distribution of data.

Buy-in is essential to the success of the Semantic Web. And if it continues to show promise, that buy-in seems likely.

-- Martin Heller

How do you see the Semantic Web affecting the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Crackpot tech: E-books

Remember the paperless office? If so, you may recall a close cousin: the e-book, which promised access to entire libraries of documents in easily readable formats -- an obvious boon to the enterprise knowledge worker on the go. As did many ideas debuting midway through the dot-com boom, it failed spectacularly.

And yet a visit to Sony’s Connect eBooks suggests that rumors of the e-book's demise have been exaggerated. For a cool $350, you can pick up the Sony Reader and start collecting from more than 11,000 titles.

But what does a shelf's worth of Michael Crichton in your pocket have to do with the enterprise? Not unlike the path to adoption taken by many devices permeating today's mobile enterprise, the e-book's "proof of concept" phase will play out on the consumer stage. And it may just be copyright protection and distribution — rather than any paper vs. LCD debate — that determines the technology’s long-term prospects.

"Another issue, besides the prohibitive cost and cumbersome nature of e-documents, concerns the vast portion of the contracts that were signed and agreed upon before e-books came onto the scene," says litigation lawyer Esther Lim, a partner at Finnegan Henderson. "That raises questions not just in terms of what rights the user has, but what rights the publisher has vis-à-vis the copyright holder."

If these issues aren't resolved, the e-book market may fail to attract the kind of vendor investment necessary to overcome the technology’s lingering cost and usability concerns.

So, until e-books have their day in court, the jury remains out on their viability for the enterprise.

-- Richard Gincel

What's your take onthe long-term viability of e-books?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Superconducting computing

How about petaflops performance to keep that enterprise really humming? Superconducting circuits -- which are frictionless and therefore generate no heat -- would certainly free you from any thermal limits on clock frequencies. But who has the funds to cool these circuits with liquid helium as required? That is, of course, assuming someone comes up with the extremely complex schemes necessary to interface this circuitry with the room-temperature components of an operable computer.

Of all the technologies proposed in the past 50 years, superconducting computing stands out as "psychoceramic." IBM’s program, started in the late 1960s, was cancelled by the early 1980s, and the Japan Ministry of Trade and Industry's attempt to develop a superconducting mainframe was dropped in the mid-1990s. Both resulted in clock frequencies of only a few gigahertz.

Yet the dream persists in the form of the HTMT (Hybrid Technology Multi-Threaded) program, which takes advantage of superconducting rapid single-flux quantum logic and should eventually scale to about 100GHz. Its proposed NUMA (non-uniform memory access) architecture uses superconducting processors and data buffers, cryo-SRAM (static RAM) semiconductor buffers, semiconductor DRAM main memory, and optical holographic storage in its quest for petaflops performance. Its chief obstacle? A clock cycle that will be shorter than the time it takes to transmit a signal through an entire chip.

So, unless you're the National Security Agency, which has asked for $400 million to build an HTMT-based prototype, don't hold your breath waiting for superconducting's benefits. In fact, the expected long-term impact of superconducting on the enterprise remains in range of absolute zero.

-- Martin Heller

How do you see the long-term prospects of superconducting computing shaping up?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Holographic & phase-change storage

What enterprise wouldn't benefit from a terabyte USB dongle on every key chain and every episode of Magnum, P.I. on a single disc? Thanks to phase-change memory and holographic storage, today's pipe dream is shaping up to be tomorrow's reality.

Currently under development by IBM, Macronix, and Qimonda, phase-change storage is being touted as 500 times faster and a magnitude smaller than traditional "floating gate" flash technology. Whereas flash memory involves the trapping of electrons, phase-change memory achieves its speed by heating a chalcogenide alloy, altering its phase from crystalline to amorphous.

This technology could prove critical in embedded computing apps, as memory cell degradation has forced many appliance developers to add expensive NVRAM (nonvolatile RAM) to store configuration information, rather than risk premature flash failure. Once realized, it could dramatically drive down the cost of appliances and push new capabilities into enterprise handsets.

Holographic storage, on the other hand, could quickly change the way we think about CDs and DVDs. So quickly, in fact, that enterprise archiving may bypass slow-to-ship dual-layer optical drives altogether and head straight to holographic optical.
InPhase Technologies is already shipping engineering prototypes of a holographic disc storage system with 60 times the storage capacity of today's DVDs. The advent of 3-D optical storage could herald the era of sending a copy of your entire corporate database off-site affordably. Think of what holographic storage could do for personal records portability: a durable ID card that contains your entire medical file in your wallet.

Regardless of which technology ships first, the enterprise is likely to benefit from both soon. Maybe those data crystals from Babylon 5 aren't so far off after all.

-- Brian Chee

How do you see the prospects of these storage technologies shaping up? What other out-there storage developments do you see shaking up the enterprise long term?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Project Blackbox

A portable datacenter may seem like pie in the sky, but in fact, Sun Microsystems has already constructed it. Whether Project Blackbox, which Sun calls the first virtualized datacenter, catches on remains to be seen, but for some, the concept is compelling.

Take a 20-foot shipping container; provide it with integrated cooling, networking, and power distribution; add external hookups for hot and cold water, 208-volt three-phase AC power, and Ethernet networking; integrate sensors, alarms, and GPS; fill its eight 19-inch shock-tolerant racks with servers -- either 120 Sun Fire T2000 servers or 250 Sun Fire T1000 systems -- and you've got one or two thousand processor cores, 7TB of memory, and more than 2PB of storage. Connect them all as a grid, for simplicity.

According to Sun, this configuration can support 10,000 simultaneous desktops without requiring an administrator, and it can be located almost anywhere: on a rooftop, in a parking garage, in a secure warehouse. It can be delivered rapidly, even to theaters of operation or catastrophe areas. What's more, Sun claims that a Project Blackbox datacenter is a tenth the price of a standard datacenter and that it can be turned on and configured in a day.

So if you find yourself unable to build or power or cool a datacenter fast enough to keep up with your enterprise's growth, or you're in need of a server farm on the go or at a hard-to-reach outpost such as an oil rig, you may find yourself in the market for this deliverable soon.

-- Martin Heller

What's your take on Project Blackbox? What other approaches to virtualization do you see creeping into the enterprise?

Posted by Jason Snyder on February 19, 2007 03:00 AM

Your turn: The next big thing?

From the far-fetched to the practical, we highlighted 12 technologies that have a history of riding the thin edge between harebrained and brilliant. Yet each has the potential to significantly shake up some aspect of the enterprise down the line.

So, bust out your crackpot meter and weigh in on whether these could-be pie-in-the-sky notions have a future by commenting on them on this blog.

If you don't see a past or present contender you'd like to nominate and want to predict the next big crackpot thing...

HAVE YOUR SAY HERE

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