Notes from Intels Developer Forum

A small group from Atos NAM attended Intel’s Developer Forum to meet with different members of Intel’a leadership team as we continue to strengthen and enhance our partnership.  As a background, in NAM we are working closely with Intel to help us enhance our portfolio by creating differentiated services through the use of their technology.  You are probably aware of the work we did with Intel to validate our belief that vPro technology could be widely used to reduce a large number of incidents in our customer environment, and also eliminate costly dispatches.  We wrote a white paper you can find here http://intel.ly/1qRtvlV and then built a case study,http://intel.ly/1sZlxYF based upon lessons learned from Towers Watson. 

Well we are taking this success and building on it as we move to Gartner IT/Symposium in Orlando.  At Symposium Intel and Atos will be sponsoring the CIO dinner, where leaders from the IT industry will convene and learn more about this fruitful partnership.  At Symposium itself we will be keeping with the theme of digital transformation and showcasing the Wireless Workplace, Collaboration and End-Point Protection, all with support and technologies from Intel.  Shortly we will publish Innovation Briefs that will discuss how these technologies can help transform our customers.

At IDF, Atos was able to validate that our strategic intent around many of the corporate initiatives we have decided are critical to our success are spot on.  We know that innovation will drive our customers to transform and with our current offerings and Intel technologies we now we will be able deliver on the vision.  In the area of workplace services the strengthening of Intel Security will only mean enhanced security services that can be leveraged through our commitment to McAfee end-point technologies.  New form factors and features will allow us to start to build new capabilities around the workplace of the future.  As wireless docking and charging, geo-fencing and location based services mature, companies will be untethered from the traditional work boundaries and design new future workspaces.  These new workspaces will open up new opportunities for collaboration, and as Real Sense technology, opens up the possibility of gesture to remove physical boundaries in virtual collaboration.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some silicon.  The new Core M vPro processor is going to enable a whole new set of managed enterprise devices that will give users a tablet-like experience in managed 2 in 1 form factor.  It will be interesting to see what comes out from Intel as a reference design.  On a geekier note the device that stood out to me was the Dell Venue 8 -7000 – A new tablet coming from Dellhttp://cnet.co/1nY1x3j

While the show was full of the traditional workplace technologies you would expect from Intel and the supporting ODM and OEM players, to me the most interesting push from Intel was their constant reminder that they are the 4th largest software house in the world by number of developers.  This was most evident when they began their push into Software Defined Infrastructure.   In Diane Bryant’s Mega Session she captures the current Intel developments in the area of SDI and Rack Scale Architecture.  Rack scale architectures, which she believes is the next step forward in software defined systems.  As she noted “The company has been working with a "growing list" of OEDMs, OEMs, ISVs and open source organizations to replace traditional architectures with pooled and disaggregated computing, networking and storage resources using modular hardware.” She went on to say “As you can imagine the majority of IT organizations do not have the data center scale nor the deep engineering expertise so they can develop a next generation data center solution like this. It is through industry collaboration and innovation that these kinds of transformation occur."  This statement supports the belief at Atos that we need to aggressively pursue our Software Defined Data Center Strategy, as Intel is willing to make bets on partners who are aggressively moving this agenda forward.  In a breakfast session with Shannon Poulin, Intel Data Center Group vice president, he stated that Intel has plans to connect with management tools from OpenStack, Microsoft and VMware, allowing workloads to be allocate to optimized hardware.  He envisioned an environment where “Eventually the software will demand the capability to land on a piece of hardware that can accelerate its workload. In order to do that you need both the platform to know what it is capable of, and then the software to know what it wants, with some orchestration software that can act as matchmaker and put the two together.”  In our session he went on to say that it will take unique system integrators who can understand all the dependencies through the stack to make this environment work. 

My Summer with a Chromebook

This summer I decided to see if it was possible to be productive using an alternative client as my primary device.  My choices were a MacBook Air, Dell #Venue 11 and #Chromebook.  I knew for the most part that the Air and Venue could keep my connected and working as they had versions of the common applications I used ready and available.  What intrigued me more was the Chromebook.  The machine of choice was a #HP Chromebook 14, in what my daughter described as shocking white!  This #Intel based machine offered a fast processor and clear 14 inch screen, while it has the option to have a cellular-radio, this version only came with Wifi.

So with a good Wifi-connection and Chrome in tow I headed out.  The first thing I did was jump on my current laptop and login to my Google Account and synchronize all my important bookmarks.  This was an immediate help as with my first login to the Chromebook I had all of my important bookmarks there ready to be tested.  I begin by testing my most commonly used Atos bookmarks - and without fail I was able to navigate anywhere in Atos that didn't need URA.  We are lucky to have most of important work sites available to us via the browser but alas I am afraid that as we continue to roll-out the PKI cards that this might soon fall by the way (That is for another post and discussion I am sure).  So a big check in the box as I was able get working and access my most commonly used Atos sites, Yeah Timecards and Expenses.  The next thing was access to all my documents and files.  Some time ago I made the decision to move my personal and professional data to the cloud.  Since Atos had provided me a ShareFile account I used that application/service to store and synchronize all my professional data across all my devices. This gave me immediate access to enterprise data.  OneDrive from Microsoft was used to store all my personal data – now on the Chromebook I had access to all my data.  The problem here really is that Google and the Chromebook make it much easier to store and find data on Google Drive – I wasn’t inclined to make the switch as I still have an Air, Ultrabook, WinPhone and Venue all configured and synchronized to these locations, especially for my work data.  I figured I would see if I could overcome this obstacle.

The next thing I did was to look at my productivity applications, which really meant Microsoft Office.  I was happy to see that Microsoft provided free, but scaled down versions, of the most common office applications in the Google Chrome store.  I can only believe that as Chromebooks gain more of a foothold in the market place and Microsoft keeps to the promise and vision of mobility and cloud that we will see Office 365 available natively on Chromebooks, until then I will share what limitations I uncovered. I found the scaled down version provided me with the necessary capabilities to do simple content creation and edit already developed content.  I probably wouldn’t have started net new content in these tools for large documents or complex presentations. My biggest challenge, was the location of most of my content for work.  As I stated earlier, work content was in #ShareFile and the online version of Office for Chrome looks for documents in #OneDrive.  To be able to successfully edit content I first had to download it from ShareFile and then upload it to OneDrive. Ugh was one way to describe it – I could have solved this by moving to Google Drive (plausible and doable) and downloading the Google Drive sync applications, but alas my trusty Windows Phone would have missed out on all the fun.  Also I felt comfortable knowing that my critical work data was protected on ShareFile and that if one of my devices was lost or stolen I could quickly protect that data.  An observer in my venture said I would have just stuck with Google Docs and that might have simplified things, but I wanted to stay as close to the experience I would have with my company provided device or the BYOD devices which all ran my Microsoft Office suite of applications.

As remote/virtual workers next thing I had to worry about was communications.  Since we had rushed the machine out the door we ordered one without a cellular radio, so I was limited to Wifi.  Here is where I will give #Comcast #Xfinity kudos, they have a nifty little applications that shows you where their hotspots are located (and they have a lot in the US), and unbeknownst to their subscribers they have been slowly opening up their customer wireless networks to allow open connections from Xfinity subscribers.  If you are a Comcast subscriber for their broadband Internet see if there isn’t a wireless network with SSID of Xfinity broadcasting at your house.  My fall back was that my #T-Mobile phone has been provisioned to be a Hotspot in a pinch.  Good if you are in a major metropolitan area, or close to major highways, bad if you are in rural area.  I would recommend that if you are looking at the Chromebook you order it with the LTE radio and a carrier that has good coverage.  The other part of being virtual was communicating with my co-workers.  While it was easy to exchange e-mails with Web Outlook and collaborate in blueKiwi the biggest limitation and the one that killed me the most was the lack of Lync.   There is an app in the Chrome Store that promises #Lync support in the future, it still isn’t there.  Well at least I had Lync on my phone, no wait, I don’t.  I had other communications options, but that none that would bridge to our Lync systems.  I used Google Voice to dial into Lync Meetings, but that was just a stop gap measure.  Here ultimately was the roadblock that put me back on my traditional device – the lack of Instant Messaging via Lync.  So maybe Microsoft will solve this when they deliver Office 365 (hopeful) or the guys at #gUnify, a nice Sip-based #WebRTC client for Chromebooks will get their Lync integration working.  The WebRTC client is interesting and something I know we are exploring elsewhere at Atos.

So some simple observations.  The Intel-based HP Chromebook is nice device, has incredible battery life (9 hours+), a bright clear screen at 14”, and responsive keyboard, a little bit finicky touchpad (you do need to figure out how to right click).  I was surprised that it was so damn heavy, but maybe as time goes buy they will change – and as I said earlier I would have ordered it with an LTE-radio.   If the web is your world then this device is perfect for you, if you have some content already created you need to determine if Google Docs, Drive, etal could support your needs – if you need to communicate with the rest of the world, then you better hope someone develops a nifty solution (and gets rich).  So summer has ended and I back to using my other devices, but I still find myself grabbing the Chromebook, because I know all my links are there, it will always have a charge and well my kids, they are on the Mac.