Government Technology - June 2008 - (Page 20)

JUNE_08 are already taking their first steps into the cloud using Salesforce.com’s tools. Mike Goodrich, the director of administration at Arlington Economic Development (AED) in Virginia, said his foray into the cloud isn’t about grand ideas of having a virtual supercomputer to do his bidding. Rather, it allows his agency to do business better. AED creates economic opportunities for Arlington; generally this is accomplished by attracting tourists and businesses to the city. By putting some of its processes, such as event registration, into Salesforce’s cloud, it frees IT staff to concentrate on providing better service instead of maintaining equipment. “Our IT staff has not had to invest their time, effort and money into maintaining servers,” he said. “They’ve been able to simply know Salesforce is maintaining our data. So there’s very little involvement from our infrastructure support. It’s not really money saved. What it does is improve our business.” It’s not just Salesforce. com and Google that are investing in clouds. Amazon offers its Web Services to small businesses that need some IT muscle but can’t afford to put it in-house. Amazon Nicholas Carr customers basically can compares the data run any or all of their center to the answering business processes on the machine. At ﬁrst, retailer’s array of servers, answering machines using only the processing required hardware — power that’s needed to do a tape recorder. Now, voicemail has replaced the job. the hardware. Eventually Nicholas Carr, former the physical data center executive editor of the will cease to exist, to be Harvard Business Review; replaced by a virtual one. author of The Big Switch; and recent keynote speaker at Government Technology’s California CIO Academy in Sacramento, Calif., likens cloud computing to Alan Turing’s theoretical “universal computing machine.” “With enough memory and enough speed, Turing’s work implies a single computer could be programmed, with software code, to do all the work that is today done by all the other physical computers in the world,” Carr wrote in IT in 2018: From Turing’s Machine to the Computing Cloud. “Turing’s discovery that ‘software can always be Georgia students compete in a robotics program designed to promote engineering careers. » substituted for hardware’ lies at the heart of ‘virtualization,’ which is the technology underpinning the great consolidation wave now reshaping big-company IT.” From running day-to-day processes on far-flung corporate machines, to a global network of load-sharing clusters, the network is becoming the computer — and the clouds are on the horizon. country,” warned Glenn Allen, professor of mechatronics engineering at Southern Polytechnic State University. “The importance of getting and recruiting our future researchers — that’s where we’re going to fall short.” It’s a familiar problem. What are organizations going to do when their knowledge base retires? Furthermore, how can businesses and government encourage the Millennial Generation to pursue careers in science and engineering, especially when all the evidence points to stagnating interest in scientific studies? 3 The answer may be robotics. Allen is the director of the Georgia BEST RobotThe booming nanotechnology industry ics program. BEST (Boosting Engineering, is paving the way for advances in fields as Science, and Technology) and FIRST (For diverse as cancer research and space explo- Inspiration and Recognition of Science and ration. The big science of creating such tiny Technology) are two programs designed to things also exposes a glaring problem for foster student and community interest in industry, including the public sector: the engineering careers. severe shortage of new workers The programs hold regional trained and skilled in math, competitions nationwide that science and engineering. bring together teams of students Fortunately there is a ray of from all grade levels, challenging hope in the form of something them to build robots that perform else nanotechnology is revoluspecific tasks. The goal is to move tionizing — robots. robotics away from a geeky subThere is plenty of conjecculture to something more akin ture about what robots will be to the local high-school football like in five or 10 years. You team — a lofty goal. can find plenty of guesses — “In middle schools and high educated and wild — about schools, as students start getting what capabilities robots will exposed to math and the sciences, possess. What’s underreported they don’t see the application, and is another purpose of robots Students are building they get bored with it and don’t machines that compete that they weren’t designed for. engage,” Allen said. “When the “Because of our shortage of against other robots. kids get involved in these robotpeople entering into engineer- Advocates say it’s time ics competitions, they realize that ing, we’ve got a crisis in this to elevate these students if they want to continue to pursue Robotics: Nerds’ Revenge? to the same level as their athlete peers. 54 20 PHOTO BY ADRIANA M. GROISMAN C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - June 2008

Government Technology - June 2008 Contents Point of View The Last Mile Big Picture On the Scene Four Questions For... 3 Technologies That May Change Your Job ...And Your Life Loosening Medicaid's Grip Better Living Through Technology Immersive Itineraries Help Yourself Taking the Bait Shared Connection Up Close Spectrum Products Personal Computing signal:noise Digital Communities Contents Digital Tactics for a U.S. Recession E-Dilemma Stifling Community Innovation Leadership Interview Estonia Becomes E-Stonia If It Were Up to Me …

Government Technology - June 2008

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