esterday, I had the privilege of attending Deltek’s Federal Executive Breakfast where Robert Bigman, the CIA’s former Chief Information Security Officer gave a presentation on cybersecurity and his time with the Agency. My five key takeaways are:

Within today’s tight operational margins and changing users and demands, sustaining legacy enterprise applications (custom or COTs) requires significant operating budget that may hinder your ability to adapt to an ever changing enterprise IT landscape. As enterprise IT becomes an important competitive building block, enterprise applications are getting larger which deters innovation and poses the risk of cost overruns.

Many of the products we use or hear about, from fighter jets to infusion pumps, are powered by software. Software holds the keys to innovation of the next big product by giving it an edge from feature to quality. The line of code or software embedded in a product makes a wonder in the modern world. In an effort to save money for the design, development, and market introduction of products, using open source software not only changes the way organizations innovate, but how they achieve their mission.

Gunnar Hellekson was good enough to help me along the path with this response on commoditization, one of my favorite words. The grounding idea for me is "undifferentiated good". Undifferentiated (another good word) is a biological concept that means "having no special structure or function." How better to bring me out of the spin I was in and back to the path at hand?

A funny thing happened at Mil-OSS LANT, I disagreed with Gunnar Hellekson! Let me be clear. Gunnar and I see eye to eye, so I feel the need to work it out in print. As usual, Gunnar put forth a very cogent and highly articulate presentation about removing complexity from software design using better design choices, fixing specialization in IT to something saner, oh and open source software. As referenced on page 18 of the presentation, "Craftsmanship is the enemy": shout it from the rooftops. Stop building better engines and start building cars, so consumers can consume not construct. If welders can weld anything, why can't system admins admin any system?

A couple of weeks ago we posted an interview DLT’s Chief Cloud Technologist David Blankenhorn did with fedScoop. The interview focused on open source software for government and included a question on how DLT supports it. To answer the question, David mentions our long time partnership with Red Hat.

David Blankenhorn, DLT’s Chief Cloud Technologist, recently sat down with fedScoop TV to discuss the importance of open source software for government. In addition to providing an overview of the open source landscape, David includes recommendations for agencies exploring open source options.

Are technology trends such as Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Open Source Software the Shake Weights of the IT Industry? Are IT professionals relying on them to be the magic bullet/quick fix for solving software efficiency? That’s the question that Jason Corey, U.S. Navy Client Executive at Red Hat proposes in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for the Navy Webcast.

I'm often asked about specific workflows within Red Hat's Satellite management tool. We'll take a look at a few common admin scenarios. One of the most common uses of Satellite is for centralized kickstart and provisioning. Here we'll walk through creating a new kickstart profile and some common options.