IBM Launches Informative Blog
November 20, 2015
IBM has created a free Paper.li blog that features information about the company: IBM’s InfoSphere Master Data Management Roundup. Besides the general categories of Headlines and Videos, readers can explore articles under Science, Technology, Business, and two IBM-specific categories, #Bluemix and #IBM. If you love to watch as Big Blue gets smaller, you will find this free newspaper useful in tracking some of the topics upon which IBM is building its future.
Oddly, though, we did not spot any articles from Alliance at IBM on the site. Some employees are unhappy with the way the company has been treating its workers, and have launched that site to publicize their displeasure. Here’s their Statement of Principles:
“Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701 is an IBM employee organization that is dedicated to preserving and improving our rights and benefits at IBM. We also strive towards restoring management’s respect for the individual and the value we bring to the company as employees. Our mission is to make our voice heard with IBM management, shareholders, government and the media. While our ultimate goal is collective bargaining rights with IBM, we will build our union now and challenge IBM on the many issues facing employees from off-shoring and job security to working conditions and company policy.”
It looks like IBM has more to worry about than sliding profits. Could the two issues be related?
Cynthia Murrell, November 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
ACA Application Process Still Vulnerable to Fraudulent Documents
November 20, 2015
The post on Slashdot titled Affordable Care Act Exchanges Fail to Detect Counterfeit Documentation relates the ongoing issue of document verification within the Affordable Care Act (ACA) process. The Government Accountability Office) GAO submitted fake applications to test the controls at the state and federal level for application and enrollment in the ACA. The article states,
“Ten fictitious applicants were created to test whether verification steps including validating an applicant’s Social Security number, verifying citizenship, and verifying household income were completed properly. In order to test these controls, GAO’s test applications provided fraudulent documentation: “For each of the 10 undercover applications where we obtained qualified health-plan coverage, the respective marketplace directed that our applicants submit supplementary documentation we provided counterfeit follow-up documentation, such as fictitious Social Security cards with impossible Social Security numbers, for all 10…”
The GAO report itself mentions that eight of the ten fakes were failed at first, but later accepted. It shows that among the various ways that the fake applications were fraudulent included not only “impossible” Social Security Numbers, but also duplicate enrollments, and lack of employer-sponsored coverage. Ultimately, the report concludes that the ACA is still “vulnerable.” Granted, this is why the GOA conducted the audit of the system, to catch issues. The article provides no details on what new controls and fixes are being implemented.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Icann Is an I Won’t
November 16, 2015
Have you ever heard of Icann? You are probably like many people within the United States and have not heard of the non-profit private company. What does Icann do? Icann is responsible for Internet protocol addresses (IP) and coordinating domain names, so basically the company is responsible for a huge portion of the Internet. According to The Guardian in “The Internet Is Run By An Unaccountable Private Company. This Is A Problem,” the US supposedly runs the Icann but its role is mostly clerical and by September 30, 2015 it was supposed to hand the reins over to someone else.
The “else” is the biggest question. The Icann community spent hours trying to figure out who would manage the company, but they ran into a huge brick wall. The biggest issue is that the volunteers want Icann to have more accountability, which does not seem feasible. Icann’s directors cannot be fired, except by each other. Finances are another problem with possible governance risks and corruption.
A supposed solution is to create a membership organization, a common business model for non-profits and will give power to the community. Icann’s directors are not too happy and have been allowed to add their own opinions. Decisions are not being made at Icann and with the new presidential election the entire power shift could be off. It is not the worst that could happen:
“But there’s much more at stake. Icann’s board – as ultimate authority in this little company running global internet resources, and answerable (in fact, and in law) to no one – does have the power to reject the community’s proposals. But not everything that can be done, should be done. If the board blunders on, it will alienate those volunteers who are the beating heart of multi-stakeholder governance. It will also perfectly illustrate why change is required.”
The board has all the power and the do not have anyone to hold them accountable. Icann directors just have to stall long enough to keep things the same and they will be able to give themselves more raises.
Whitney Grace, November 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Yahoo 2015: A Xoogler in the Drink, Calls in the MBAs for a Rescue
November 10, 2015
Years ago, when Google was a foundling, the myth of the brilliance of the Googler was fresh, new. Xooglers have had a good run. Work at the 24×7, wild and wonderful outfit for a few years. Then cash in and become an investment banker, an entrepreneur, or a senior manager.
Yahoo did the Xoogler thing. There was chatter years ago that the Yahoo was going to be a big deal in the exciting Internet world with mobile, smart software, semantics, apps, and original content.
How is that working out?
I read “Yahoo Hires McKinsey to Mull Reorg, as Mayer Demands Exec Pledge to Stay” to find out. Interesting analysis from a person in a good position to observe and gather information. Among the tidbits I jotted down were:
- The new swing for the fences initiative is Project Index. Index? That’s an exciting concept.
- Yahoo does not want to lose key staff. Who does?
- The top Xoogler hired the bluest of the blue chip consulting firms to help put some revenues on the books.
Okay, another big plan. Just like those at Google except and this is a classic “but for” construction—ad revenue. Google has it. Yahoo has less. A home run is unlikely to win the game in which Yahoo finds itself.
Losing staff? The fix is not to lock a professional down in my opinion. Working with a company is a choice. When folks decide not to work with an outfit, no contract will fix the free agent mentality of certain folks. The effort may cause people to bail out.
And the McKinsey thing? Blue chip consulting is a darned exciting type of work. Who is the client? The Xoogler? The Board of Directors? The stakeholders? Consider the answer, gentle reader. Blue chip consulting firms may not have all the answers, but the blue chip firms know how to set their agenda and then follow up.
What will McKinsey do? Preserve McKinsey. Yahoo may be in for some surprises because not even the smartest Xooglers in the world see opportunity quite the same way blue chip consulting firms do.
McKinsey did not hire Yahoo. Yahoo allegedly hired McKinsey. Who has the power now?
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2015
Quote to Note: Axil Springer on Planning
November 5, 2015
Here’s a delicious statement attributed to Mathias Doepfner, an Axil Springer big gun. For context, remember that Axil Springer bought the Financial Times for something north of $1.3 billion. Now the quote:
“A takeover of this size … is neither planned nor foreseeable.”
Maybe an impulse buy like Google’s purchase of Motorola? I assume that Volkswagen did not plan or foresee the consequences of its emission control software behavior. German management approaches certain decisions in an interesting way: Neither planned nor foreseeable.
Stephen E Arnold, November 5, 2015
It Is Not a Bird in the Law Firm
November 3, 2015
In science-fiction, artificial intelligence is mostly toyed around with in robots and androids. Machines that bear artificial intelligence either try to destroy humanity for their imperfection or coexist with humanity in a manner that results in comedic situations. In reality, artificial intelligence exists in most everyday objects from a mobile phone to a children’s toy. Artificial intelligence is a much more common occurrence than we give our scientists credit for and it has more practical applications than we could imagine. According to PR Newswire one of the top artificial intelligence developers has made a new deal for their popular product, “RAVN Systems’ Artificial Intelligence Platform Is Deployed At Berwin Leighton Paisner.”
RAVN Systems is known for their top of line software in enterprise search, unstructured big data analytics, knowledge management, and, of course, artificial intelligence. The international law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner recently deployed RAVN Systems’s RAVN Applied Cognitive Engine (RAVN ACE). RAVN ACE will work in the law firm’s real estate practice, not as a realtor, but as the UK’s first contract robot. It will use cutting-edge AI to read and interpret information from documents, converting unstructured data into structured output. RAVN ACE will free up attorneys to complete more complex, less menial tasks.
“Matthew Whalley, Head of Legal Risk Consultancy at BLP commented, ‘The robot has fast become a key member of the team. It delivers perfect results every time we use it. Team morale and productivity has benefited hugely, and I expect us to create a cadre of contract robots throughout the firm. If the reaction to our first application is any indication, we will be leading the implementation of AI in the Law for some time to come.’ ”
RAVN ACE has more applications than writing real estate contracts. It can be deployed for financial services, media, telecommunications, and more. Taking over the menial tasks will save on time , allowing organizations to reinvest time into other projects.
Whitney Grace, November 3, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
HP Management on Deal Making
November 2, 2015
I love it when management wizards makes comments about management—at other companies. Navigate to “HP Enterprise’s Whitman Pans Dell’s EMC Purchase over Debt.” When you read this comment from HP’s top dog, keep in mind that HP bought DEC and Compaq and flubbed the revenue. Then HP bought Autonomy and wrote off $8 billion of the purchase price.
Here goes:
But, the reality is that we are two years ahead of the game and it will be difficult for others to catch up. First, let me give a little context. To pay back the interest on the $50 billion of debt that the new combined company will have on their balance sheet, Dell will need to pay roughly $2.5 billion a year in interest alone. That’s $2.5 billion that they will allocate away from R&D and other business critical activities, which will keep them from better serving their customers.
In case HP has forgotten, Amazon seems to be doing okay in the cloud market. What is the cost of the Autonomy acquisition? Hmm.
That’s HP.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2015
Neglect Exposes Private Medical Files
October 28, 2015
Data such as financial information and medical files are supposed to be protected behind secure firewalls and barriers that ensure people’s information does not fall into the wrong hands. While digital security is at the best it has ever been, sometimes a hacker does not to rely on his/her skills to get sensitive information. Sometimes all they need to do is wait for an idiotic mistake, such as what happened on Amazon Web Services wrote Gizmodo in “Error Exposes 1.5 Million People’s Private Records On Amazon Web Services.”
Tech junkie Chris Vickery heard a rumor that “strange data dumps” could appear on Amazon Web Services, so he decided to go looking for some. He hunted through AWS, found one such dump, and it was a huge haul or it would have been if Vickery was a hacker. Vickery discovered it was medical information belonging to 1.5 million people and from these organizations: Kansas’ State Self Insurance Fund, CSAC Excess Insurance Authority, and the Salt Lake County Database.
“The data came from Systema Software, a small company that manages insurance claims. It still isn’t clear how the data ended up on the site, but the company did confirm to Vickery that it happened. Shortly after Vickery made contact with the affected organizations, the database disappeared from the Amazon subdomain.”
The 1.5 million people should be thanking Vickery, because he alerted these organizations and the data was immediately removed from the Amazon cloud. It turns out that Vickery was the only one to access the data, but it begs the question what would happen if a malicious hacker had gotten hold of the data? You can count on that the medical information would have been sold to the highest bidder.
Vickery’s discovery is not isolated. Other organizations are bound to be negligent in data and your personal information could be posted in an unsecure area. How can you get organizations to better protect your information? Good question.
Whitney Grace, October 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Vodafone Improves Search Management
October 20, 2015
More than 8,000 call center agents use Vodafone’s internal knowledge management platform dubbed AskVodafone to access client information. AskVodafone’s old system was not performing as well as it used, so the company decided to upgrade to Exorbyte. Motor Traffic runs down Vodafone’s upgrade process in the article, “Exorbyte Matchmaker Managed Over 2 million Searches A Month On The Platform AskVodafone.”
Vodafone wanted to shorten an agent’s processing time on phone calls. The solution required faceted search, keyword suggestions, more accurate search results, and information related to a caller’s issue. Exorbyte created an individualized solution for Vodafone and they were given the job:
“Through the experience with the Exorbyte solutions and, of course, the existing site license used in the company the contract has been awarded directly to Exorbyte. These Andreas Vieth, Product Manager Search: ‘Due to the long and successful collaboration with Exorbyte it was logical for us to continue with them in the modernization of AskVodafone portal and to develop synergies between these and the Exorbyte search on the Vodafone website.’”
The solution indexes over 25,000 Web sites and it has increased the center’s data quality and results relevancy. The end result is that over 8,000 calls and 50,000 searches performed on AskVodafone are resolved faster and with better information.
Whitney Grace, October 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Lexmark, a Printer Supply Company, Receives Hold Rating from Analysts
October 20, 2015
The article on Dakota Financial News titled Lexmark International Given Average Recommendation of “Hold” by Brokerages (NYSE: LXK) piles on the bad news for Lexmark, a company best known for its printer supply services. It is a tough time to be in the printing business, and Lexmark has received numerous analyst ratings of “Hold” and “Sell.” The article details the trend,
“Lexmark International (NYSE:LXK) traded down 0.59% during trading on Wednesday, hitting $28.59. The company had a trading volume of 259,296 shares. Lexmark International has a one year low of $27.22 and a one year high of $47.69. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $30.27 and a 200 day moving average of $39.70. The company’s market capitalization is $1.76 billion…The company reported $0.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.85 by $0.12. “
Certainly not a vote of confidence in Lexmark, which owns both Brainware and ISYS Search Software. The article goes into some detail about the companies other work beyond printer supplies including enterprise content and process management software and healthcare archive with integration abilities for unstructured patient information. Perhaps these extras are saving the company from falling entirely into the “sell” category and maintaining at “Hold.”
Chelsea Kerwin, October 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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