From FMI 2016 in Chicago

FMI Connect 2016

Photo by Jason Corey

FMI Connect in Chicago was an opportunity to meet with customers and collaborators in the US Grocery Industry.  Great event.  I had a chance to meet with several different players in the industry.  Despite the fact it feels like the CPG dominate this conference in various sessions I had a chance to meet with several grocers

Public vrs Private Cloud

Interesting question to ask.  Over the past two years we have seen a significant movement to the public cloud, specifically public cloud providers AWS (Amazon), Microsoft, and Google.  Now we are seeing another shift in the industry that back to private cloud.

A 451 Research study (VofE Cloud) found that there is an increasing desire to repatriate into a provide cloud configuration to drive down cost and gain better control of enterprise date. On average, those who planned to migrate workloads from public to private cloud environments within two years expected to move 40% of their public cloud workloads to private clouds.

Presentation at the Society of Conservation GIS Conferance Monterrey 2016

In June 2016, Charles presented at the Society of Conservation GIS Conference in Monterrey, California to speak about Cedar Box Apps. Scroll down to view the video of the talk. Or view the slides at http://www.slideshare.net/cnburnett/webgisbased-conservation-tools-for-first-nations-stewardship

Abstract
Marine stewardship in British Columbia is increasingly complex, contextualized by our First Nations? strong rights and title positions, and evolving co/management regimes. Small teams of fisheries managers, planners and technicians are being tasked with monitoring, assessment and planning tasks that would normally be the remit of well-staffed provincial departments. Over the last 10 years, First Nations stewardship managers have been searching for information systems that bring spatial analysis more efficiently and seamlessly into the day-to-day operations of all staff. Several decision-support systems have emerged using web-GIS technologies to address this challenge. Technically, these systems consist of: geodatabase back-ends (commonly PostGIS) and an HTML/JS/CSS front end, spatial libraries, and PHP or Python code. All of the systems do two key functions: (1) help to manage large cultural and ecosystem geodatabases, and (2) provide tools to mobilize the geo knowledge base in specific contexts such as: project/permit impact assessment, cumulative impacts assessment, compiling evidence to support legal cases. The geospatial analyses thus are varied: from proximity reports, to spatial modelling and visualization, to spatial key-phrase searches. Each system goes some way towards providing necessary efficiencies to stewardship office staff, but gaps remain. For example, the following features would be useful when incorporated: secure links to government databases, incorporating management tools outside of conservation (fee-simple lands, environmental management), mobilizing knowledge for schools, managing field survey data, and stewardship staff time-tracking and billing.

FYI: Also participating were ~20 young international scholars doing amazing work around the world: http://www.conservationgis.org/scgis/2016/ScgIntl2016A.html

Office 365 in Canada

Office 365 in a Canadian Data Centres

They are up and running.  Microsoft's two Canadian Data Centres (in the GTA and Quebec City area) are up and running.  We are now able to offer an office 365 solution on Canadian soil using one Canadian data centre as the primary and the second as a backup.

Managed Services is about the User Experience and Driving Innovation

Small and medium business increasingly are turning to managed services providers (MSP) to meet their technology needs. However, in many cases it is without a clear understanding of the expected outcome.