designsoverview

Fluxology SA

byPaul Peters

©2010 All rights reservedFluxology SA Proprietary and Confidential

Adaptive Clouds• WHY: Long overdue• WHAT: De-centralized mobile processing containers• HOW: Activity-driven distributed virtualized computing• DIFF: Proximity-aware self-regulating on-demand capacity

The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing1. The network is reliable2. Latency is zero3. Bandwidth is infinite4. The network is secure5. Topology doesn't change6. There is one administrator7. Transport cost is zero8. The network is homogeneous

Several infrastructural converging trends are converging themselves making the current design of small and large scale environments inadequate. Using a mix of current industry standards runtime containers can be made which allow for adaptive vertical and horizontal scalable distributed systems.

Ambient Assistant/Desktop• WHY: Enable next generation collaboration and personalization.• WHAT: Device-independent holospheric virtual workspace.• HOW: Virtual Assistant -aaS + Desktop/Briefcase mix + 2.5D GUI• DIFF: Independence, flexibility, resilience, ease of use.

An integrated Virtual Assistant to maintain contacts, appointments, mails, answering machines, conversations, active projects, and even plans routes, switching from one device to the next, seemingly with effortless synchronization from laptop, to phone, to television, to tablet, to car, to an interactive projection. An assistant which categorizes information for you, stores it, searches it and offers recommendations. Manifesting as an multi-sensory interactive sphere wrapping the current interaction device, e.g. a phone, ‘smart’ objects in the vicinity become part of the ‘extended’ desktop, such as e-Ink variants on Post-It with enough memory to replace USB memory sticks, merging them into a single ad-hoc unit. Desktops become more like virtualized personalized browsers/dashboards allowing exchangeable snapshots between ones own Virtual Assistant and those of others, or even maintaining active channels.

Aspect-Oriented Operations• WHY: Query based monitoring and management

• WHAT: System encapsulation with a ‘tag cloud’ of control points

• HOW: Centralized meta-tag repository + interceptor injection

• DIFF: Relational Service and System Management

Enable a smarter enterprise by smarter use of applications and data. This can result in coordinated synchronized processing (faster time-to-market), smart provisioning, downtime optimization, improved corporate scheduling, easier maintenance and upgrades, easier matching with system interdependencies and interoperability. Integrate Business Process Management of work streams with underlying Business Service Management of activity streams. Reduced operations overhead with more smarter use leading to cost reduction and competitive advantageous usage.

Auto-discovery Governance• WHY: Find the off-switch for just “keeping the lights on”.

• WHAT: Data mine the data center.

• HOW: Use search tools to map out functions and interfaces.

• DIFF: Gives the actual tools to make the change.

Using search and recommendation engines along with meta-programming tools doing the reverse translation, a real-time interactive map is constructed of all interfaces, functions, scripts, descriptors. After the initial quick-win bulk-load a repository describing all functionality will continue to fill up while the recommendation engine offers bits of work according to an overall improvement program maximizing impact, so that renewed order and improvements are re-introduced in the IT environment. With meta-programming tools, an developer/operator needs to know just one or some languages, the rest is translated by the tool to the language-system combination, so that even relatively unknown systems can be re-injected with new functionality.

Chatbots for Customer Care• WHY: Continuous customer engagement• WHAT: Good maintenance and support means add-on sales • HOW: Use smart chatbots instead of call centre off-shoring• DIFF: Don’t break the ‘chain’ of experience. Not for the

company’s value chain and not for customer interaction.

Reclaiming maintenance and wrapping it in an integrative cycle approach allows for continuous improvement due to the positive feedback loops this introduces, and for the end client a welcome atmosphere of ongoing commitment.Current ‘smart’ chatbots can deal with most support cases, but let’s just keep this simple for a ‘management by exception’ modality with 80% automation and 20% human intervention. Due to benefit of scale, there are likely additional advantages concerning the human factor (besides making their work more interesting, challenging, adding more meaning to their job, and thus increasing loyalty) such as home-office models, etc.. Real-time analytics can be used for service perception management allowing an instant forward to a real assistant, and correction of the chatbot’s behavioural model. Thus the ‘maintenance’ of this solution involves continuous improvement itself.

Eco-ethics label• WHY: Allow customers to really express a preference• WHAT: Fair Trade with nature• HOW: Label showing interwoven criteria with chain responsibility• DIFF: Useable, promotes improvement.

Introduce a customer label which expresses the direct ecological footprint, the indirect environmental footprint and the ethical footprint of how a product, service, website, etc. came to be. Using simple visuals chain responsibility is displayed up to the 2nd degree in the supply chain, a first checkbox for the item itself, a second the direct ‘costs’ of item, and the third the accumulative status of the indirect ‘providers of the providers’. This way discrepancies will always bubble up to the surface. Rainbow style colour-coding is used to express the current status, simple symbols, such as -, <, o, >, + can be used to express trend movement. ISO 26000 is used as an guideline with the added notion that any ‘costs’ will be reflected within a value of one of the three criteria. Additional effort will be made for mapping the multitude of eco-labels within this setup as well as an international consortium within the academic world to ensure scientific integrity.

Evaluetor - Smart contract scans• WHY: ‘Excellent things are rare’ - Plato

• WHAT: Automated legal ICT interpretation of many contracts

• HOW: ‘Smart’ scanning of contracts to detects SLA’s and KPI’s

• DIFF: New approach.

Dutch company Senority combines decennia of experience in building and maintaining long-lasting service relationships from companies such as EDS in their Evaluetor toolset. Evaluetor is a collaborative impression management tool to enable and facilitate “Service Excellence”, an engagement model with renewed and continuous improvement, and issue resolution. Using knowledgeable Natural Language Processing tools this can be extended to many clients so that the large many contracts, Service Level Agreements, Operations Level Agreements, support contracts, etcetera can be analyzed, decomposed, and translated into a ‘agreement map’ with useful Key Performance Indicators. Additionally new contracts can have a test-run in the analysis tool for impact analysis.

“First scan” bottleneck in recruitment• WHY: Obvious..• WHAT: Capabilities recommendation engine • HOW: Use AI-aaS to get to a very fast yet informed first scan• DIFF: No solution tries to go beyond the norm..

Recruitment firms and hiring departments generally use one of two methods to filter through the initial pile of responses on an open vacancy, a keyword matching scan or sifting through a large pile of print-outs checking each CV for a mere 10 seconds trying to match role, location, age, experience, gender, etcetera. Reducing the often 300 responses to a reasonable managed selection thus relates on simple matching, either automated or done by some junior colleague. Compared to a reasonable approach, the chance the best five or ten candidates are lost within this procedure is near to 100%. Using NLP, knowledge and rules engines, a well-founded expert level evaluation is generated which tries to offer alternatives and improvements beyond the senseless keyword matching by mapping out skills, capabilities, experience, flexibility, etcetera. Not another automated psycho-metric machine..

Internet of Qualia• WHY: An internet of internets• WHAT: Central registry/repository of certifiable qualities• HOW: Contracts specifying a ‘Circles of Trust’ infrastructure• DIFF: Allows for the messy world of real life..

Starting with interoperability standards participants register a “letter of intent” relating to a certificate specifying one of several strategies defining a circle’s ‘strength’ in adherence to the qualities referred to. Besides the legal status of such a ‘contracted intent’ the participant is expected to implement security measures according to the ‘strength’ of a circle. The qualities referred to can be anything, from ISO standards, UN/EDIFACT, a brand like Gucci, purchasing a vacuum cleaner, Monet’s gradual formation of cataract or the hotel booking behaviour of my next door neighbour’s uncle which happens to represent roughly 40% of the populations preferences. With the flexibility to have many contracts to many circles, many circles to many certificates, and many certificates to many qualities, this simple infrastructure allows for ad-hoc cooperative construct between companies, provisional sales agreements, a secured bazaar of “Milan fashion” internet shops, valuation according to the gold standard, localized bartering standards, twitter contracts acting as a micro-credit alternative to micro-payments (reducing the cost by batching), or simply competition as usual.

Job exchange for high-potentials• WHY: Angel-to-Angel job network• WHAT: Interpersonal job exchange network for talents• HOW: Personal networks, extend to encapsulate LinkedIn/Xing• DIFF: One in ten people can be a productive creative

Interim sub-contract for high-potentials who want meaningful jobs combined with change and challenge. Usual Management Consultancy works the wrong way around.. young inexperienced people are sent all over the world scattering around the latest and greatest ideas from the world of academia. Buzzword compliant, but often wrong, once they’ve reached a certain level of maturity they often opt for a steady job, preferably executive, and pursue a better work-life balance. Yet, there is a large segment of 40+ year old high-potentials, with the background experience of the good and the bad, with more than enough skills and capabilities, and often unique ways of viewing situations. These people often go work for their own, set up a small firm or whichever way they can combine their urge for freedom, self-expression and meaningful work. Where is the network for such seniors and executives, who are more than willing to spend some 2 or 3 years in bringing worthwhile ideas into practise?

Let Food be you Medicine• WHY: An apple a day keeps the doctor away• WHAT: Integral approach to Asian medicine • HOW: Mix with dietary, agricultural, environmental programs• DIFF: Bio-diversity

The “Garden of Eden” is an ongoing initiative of Dutchman Guus Lieberwerth to address bio-diversity issues nearly 30 year ago. Industrialized agriculture was warned to become so dominant, nature itself could not keep up with the forced commoditization, and Guus started a ‘living gene bank’ maintained by a small city allowance and volunteers. Nowadays, besides Monsanto, the Kingdom of Bhutan, certain parts of rainforests and The Millennium Project library of DNA codes, he hosts the largest concentration of bio-diversity in the world, renowned for his collection of onions and tomatoes where variations run in the tens of thousands. Although standardizing foods has had its obvious benefits, restrictive government regulations on farming, genetic manipulation is the obvious self-fulfilling road ahead, especially considering the expected size of the earth population of some 9 to 10 billion humans. A workable coopetitive alternative exists in using an integral approach to preventive health and medical treatment, re-introduction of bio-diversity and organic agriculture, by using foods as medicine, for which we just need to access the wide variety of sources from Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Tibetan, Native- and South-American herbalism and medicine, and do some smart data-mining if no doctor is present to construct a personalized dietary treatment.

Medical Semiotic Augmentation• WHY: Smart Hospitals..• WHAT: Visual/auditory recognition tools.• HOW: Active matching using a library of visual/auditory events• DIFF: Support and facilitate, don’t replace.

• Self-help diagnostics for remote assistance ( 911 or ER or online virtual doctor)• Remote surgery assistance (follow-the-sun medical expert network which can

help out remote hospitals and clinics)• Wireless health monitoring (offload expensive equipment into network)• Automatic patient identification• Diagnostic support for Emergency Room and automated treatment preparation• Surgical procedure/roadmap projection• Real-time verification of medicine allocation (right pill for right patient)• Adherence verification of medical procedure to case file• Real-time data mining for unusual cases, on-the-fly learning and support• Smart medicine cabinet with routine checks and automatic order management• Medically ‘supervised’ physical therapy and dietary sound lunch rooms

Micro-donations• WHY: Micro-tax with meaning• WHAT: Encapsulate social media for donations• HOW: Flag articles, blogs, comments for donations• DIFF: Addresses basic human needs of hope and self-expression

Allocate small amounts, like $0,50, $1, $5, $25 to raise awareness on issues, sponsor solution studies or donate to a particular solution as described in an article, blog or in the long list of comments. Using HTML5 features for a donation ‘drop box’ which high-lighting and low-lighting features to focus attention on possible worthwhile addressing of issues. The platform itself will deduce which issues are being referred to, gather donations, preferred actions and will use a transparent bidding/auction mechanism to make this happen. If certain persons are significantly associated with certain solutions, e.g. through discussions using the comments on articles, these persons will be contacted to help in realizing the requests. Frequent users can opt for a bi-monthly overview for registration of tax-deductable gift.Eventually the platform can grow to include micro-lending, micro-seeding and micro-investments to allow for more transparent, accountable and socially responsible ways of stimulating individuals and small and medium businesses.

RFID-as-a-Sonar• WHY: Spatial awareness for objects

• WHAT: Cheap geo-tagging for geo-location

• HOW: Use dumb passive RFID tags with smart antennas

• DIFF: More flexible, higher precision, lower cost than GPS

Using affordable chip-scale atomic clocks which measure time at a frequency higher than 1 GHz the duration between sending a signal and receiving a reply from an RFID tag can be measured to an accuracy which allows location measurement with a fine-grained resolution of some 20 cm. With three antennas in combination to process the RFID reply triangulation can be used to deduce the relative position of the tagged object. Any background noise is filtered by regular joint calibration of the antennas (radar snapshot for Feshbach–Fano method).

Sound Emitting Diodes• WHY: Obvious “infrastructural” enablement technology.• WHAT: Use sound and vibration patterns in new ways. • HOW: Thermo-acoustic nano-speakers for mono- and multimodal - acoustics.• DIFF: More flexible and resilient than using sound-sheets.

• “Speaker-paint” for phononic filters, anti-sound or anti mosquito nets.• Enhance drilling use directed phonons.• Enhance cutting tools with vibration, from surgical knifes to ploughs.• Enhanced car washing using phonons to shape the water jet spray.• Sound-enhanced brushes which can be flushed through tight tunnels so to clean drains.• Security systems using sound – anti-sound beams. • Sound massage for medical treatment (tight muscles, faster bone healing).• Combine with electronics to create ball-lighting for non-lethal guns .• Adaptive layer of air-pockets for airplanes so it reduces the friction with the air.• Sound “wall” around a motorway which 'shake' toxic gases out of the air, plus anti-sound.• Loud sound beams to create a fulcrum tension tunnel, an underwater river, around oil spills..

Virtual Enterprise Marketplace• WHY: Commoditization doesn’t need be dumb

• WHAT: Cloud-BPM and an online service marketplace

• HOW: Prefab process templates for assembling activity tunnels

• DIFF: Cooperative and collaborative e-business

Using a portfolio of well-defined business processes from ERP, CRM and PLM, smaller companies can construct a larger company by mixing their own business and the services offered by other firms. Companies can register a set of functional offerings, such as bookkeeping, specialized personalized manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, industrial design, repair services, using a generic adaptive set of interfaces and descriptors. The marketplace itself is a flexible platform combining searches, recommendation, web directories with generalized entry and exit points. Participants can follow a large set of strategies on pricing, discounts, ongoing or timed negotiations, preferences, etcetera. Besides offering regular services, small companies can choose to construct a collaborative distribution network, a cooperative virtual warehouse or larger companies can offer collective purchasing services to other companies, or even micro-franchising.