For many of us, coronavirus reminds us of 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis, events that reshaped our society in lasting ways, from how we travel and work, to the level of security and surveillance we have all become accustomed to.  On 9/11, Americans discovered we are vulnerable to calamities we thought only happened in distant lands.  The 2008 financial crisis told us we could also suffer the afflictions of the past, such as the economic meltdown of the Great Depression.  Now, the 1918 flu pandemic is a sudden specter in our lives.  A global pandemic keeps us confined and contained in our homes -maybe for months- is already re-orienting our lifestyle, our relationship to the outside...

Exactly 100 years since Prohibition began, some distilleries have voluntarily halted producing alcohol for consumption.  Instead of conducting business as usual, these boutique-style distilleries have started to produce hand sanitizer.  Micro-distilleries have found a business model that both allows them to stay afloat and that also fulfills an urgent social need.  By repurposing their facilities to produce hand sanitizer, they can replenish the critical supplies that have been scarce for weeks now, because of the coronavirus.  It’s an interesting change in strategy in a time when many small businesses are grappling to find ways to stay open and stay relevant.   “This is not the...

Hospitals and healthcare workers are bearing the brunt of the Covid-19 outbreak across the world.  Everywhere people are trying to flatten the curve of the infection rate as Stay Home directives and self-quarantines are put in place.  People are worried about the burden on the hospitals, staff, and the aging technology and infrastructure they rely on.   Hospitals are Prioritized by the Government and Network Providers The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, has announced the Keep Americans Connected Initiative that directly prioritizes hospitals.  Congress appropriated $200 million dollars for the Covid-19 Telehealth Program that will support healthcare...

In 2020, we are in the cloud computing era. Many of us still own personal computers, but we mostly use them to access centralized services like Dropbox, Gmail, Office 365, Slack, etc. As centralized as this all sounds, the truly amazing thing about cloud is that a large percentage of users and companies rely on the infrastructure, hosting, machine learning and compute power of a very select few cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, and IBM. Almost everything that can be centralized has been centralized. Most of the opportunities for the cloud lie on the “edge”. So, what is edge? Definition: Edge is part of distributed computing topology in which information processing is...

Why are Internet Networks Crashing during the Covid-19 Outbreak? Worldwide we are seeing millions and millions of people forced to stay in their homes and try to move their whole world online.  Working from home, streaming media to distract themselves from boredom and isolation and video conferencing with friends is becoming a worldwide phenomenon.  At the same time internet networks are crashing.  Netflix Europe among other companies has decided to throttle speeds to try to address this.  You can read the article here. (link to Jeremy’s article) The main reason that internet networks are crashing lies in the features that residential internet networks have and don’t have.   Hands...

More Businesses than ever are Forced Online As the world is suddenly shut indoors with the threat of Covid-19, more and more people are moving their social and business needs to the internet.  Everyone is working from home and businesses are trying to keep up by reimagining their business in an online world.  This comes with a sudden realization that our infrastructure is not ready to support a world that is fully internet based.  We are now seeing Netflix Europe throttle it’s speeds to prevent crashing networks.  You can read that article here.   Is our infrastructure ready to support a work force that is entirely remote? Now that everyone is shut indoors the world has been forced to...

Remote Working on the Rise Working from home has been a growing trend for the last few years with more companies allowing workers to telecommute in order to accommodate schedules, or even asking employees to work from home to alleviate office space needs and to accommodate remote workers.   “Regular telecommuting grew 140% in the past decade, more than 10 times faster than the rest of the workforce.” -Global Workplace Analytics   Now with covid-19 acting as an external force to move all companies to a remote work model, the question is what will the future look like? Will more people than ever want to continue working from home? And can the infrastructure support a workforce that...