If you haven’t had a chance to review the California Board of Equalization’s (BOE) Strategic Technology Roadmap, take a quick look; The 2020 Plan: Roadmap to the Future. You may also want to browse through a presentation given at the Feb 2009 CIO Academy, Strategic Planning: Exploring a new Model in which the BOE Strategic Plan is discussed.

As I have written about in a previous article “You don’t need GPS to use a Technology Roadmap…” several issues are addressed, including an outdated plan, goal setting, budgetary planning, legal and compliance issues, people, training, and staffing, and most importantly, a documented agreement to review the plan every 12 months.

I’ve been having a discussion with Millo Avissar from iSkoot regarding cloud computing, and it’s major technical problems.

It is my opinion that Cloud Computing is/was sold on its technical merit, rather than business merit. Selling to technologists may work for enabling technologies — but virtualizing datacenters begins to creep into the business.

I know, from working with businesses in multiple market segments, that companies seem to have similar concerns about their data and services (particularly those businesses whose revenue is driven in part by online commerce.)

In most cases, the issues are the same as the buy vs. build considerations for datacenters vs. colocation.

A LinkedIn “Unix and Linux Forum” user asked:

“My company is going to require antivirus software on all UNIX servers. Does anyone know of a good reliable product? I was under the impression that UNIX was not prone to viruses as Windows is.”

You are somewhat correct in your assumption that UNIX is not as prone to viruses as windows, however, UNIX filesystems are commonly used to host and share files, email clients that run on UNIX can forward contaminated files, and web servers that run on UNIX can be infected and become the Typhoid Mary of the computing world. Running a virus scanner can protect other systems as well as your own. Also note that while a virus running in userland/user-space can not (typically) contaminate the kernel or protected files and filesystems, files available to the executing user can be corrupted; yet another reason not to work as root!

A recent inquiry from a potential client spurred me to dig up a few notes and sundry draft copies of Technology Roadmaps (TRM) from my past; sorting the haphazard disarray of completed Visio drawings and hand drawn notes into piles was encouragement enough to jot down these few words for your viewing pleasure.

[Note: This is by no means a complete guide to TRM development. If you are interested in full processes, Amazon has a great selection of books on Technology Roadmapping.]

Notes from the not-so-far-side:

• The only TRM worth having is the one you’re willing to throw away.