Lockheed Martin and Microsoft

“We (Lockheed Martin) understand the importance of our missions and the trust our customers place in us. With this in mind, we strive to excel in every aspect of our business and approach every challenge with a determination to success.” Lockheed Martin code of ethics

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 136,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services. The company wanted to help its customers obtain the benefits of cloud computing, while balancing security, privacy, and confidentiality concerns. The company used Windows Azure to develop the Thundercloud™ design which is a Microsoft program that integrates on-premises infrastructure with compute, storage, and application services in the cloud. Now, Lockheed Martin can provide its customers with vast computing power, enhanced business agility, and reduced costs of application infrastructure, while maintaining full control of their data and security processes.

William (Bill) Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It did grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world’s richest people. Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at Washington State University. They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data. Allen spoke to Ed Roberts, president of Altair manufacturer MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), and sold him on the idea. Gates and Allen worked night and day to complete the first microcomputer, Basic. Allen moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in January 1975, he became the director of software for MITS. Gates dropped out of his sophomore year at Harvard and joined Allen in Albuquerque.

A competitor’s strengths and weaknesses are usually based on the presence and absence of key assets and skills needed to compete in the market.

To determine just what constitutes a key asset or skill within an industry, David A. Aaker in his book, Developing Business Strategies suggests concentrating your efforts in four areas: The reasons behind successful as well as unsuccessful firms Prime customer motivators Major component costs Industry mobility barriers

According to theory, the performance of a company within a market is directly related to the possession of key assets and skills. Therefore, an analysis of strong performers should reveal the causes behind such a successful track record. This analysis, in conjunction with an examination of unsuccessful companies and the reasons behind their failure, should provide a good idea of just what key assets and skills are needed to be successful within a given industry and market segment. For instance, in the personal-computer operating-system software market, Microsoft reigns supreme with DOS and Windows. It has been able to establish its dominance in this industry because of superior marketing and research as well strategic partnerships with a large majority of the hardware vendors that produce personal computers. This has allowed DOS and Windows to become the operating environment, maybe not of choice, but of necessity for the majority of personal computers on the market.

Microsoft’s primary competitors, Apple and IBM, both have competing operating systems with a great deal of marketing to accompany them; however, both suffer from weaknesses that Microsoft has been able to exploit. Apple’s operating system for its Macintosh line of computers, while superior in many ways to DOS and Windows, is limited to the Macintosh personal computers; therefore, it doesn’t run many of the popular business applications that are readily available to DOS and Windows. To an extent, IBM’s OS/2 operating system suffers from the same problem. While it will run on all of the personal computers DOS and Windows can run on and even handle Windows applications, the number of programs produced for OS/2 in its native environment is very small. According to Jack Welch, former CEO and Chairman of GE Corporation, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” Competitive Advantage (CA) is absolutely important for any business as that’s what sets you apart from you competitors. CA gives you the edge to compete in the market place. But what if your competitive advantage is under threat? If competitor offers the same distinguishing service or feature that you do thereby destroying your competitive advantage.

Introduction-Lockheed Martin and Microsoft Since technology is such a vital force, the field of technology management has emerged to address the particular ways in which companies should approach the use of technology in business strategies and operations. Technology is inherently difficult to manage because it is constantly changing, often in ways that cannot be predicted. Technology management is the set of policies and practices that leverage technologies to build, maintain, and enhance the competitive advantage of the firm on the basis of proprietary knowledge and know-how. The U.S. National Research Council in Washington, D.C., defined management of technology (MOT) as linking “engineering, science, and management disciplines to plan, develop, and implement technological capabilities to shape and accomplish the strategic and operational objectives of an organization” (National Research Council, 1987).

While technology management techniques are themselves important to firm competitiveness, they are most effective when they complement the overall strategic posture adopted by the firm. The strategic management of technology tries to create competitive by incorporating technological opportunities into the corporate strategy. While Lockheed Martin (LM) is well known as a premier defense contractor, the company also develops innovative Information Technology (IT) solutions for government, healthcare, and energy markets. In fact LM is the largest provider of IT services to the United States government, helping the Department of Defense and other federal agencies manage challenges such as cyber security and others.

“Lockheed Martin customers need the capacity to respond dynamically and comprehensively to some of the country’s most serious business challenges, from conducting the U.S. Census to launching manned missions to Mars,” says Melvin Greer, Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing, Information Systems and Global Solutions at LM. “We need the capacity to respond with agility and flexibility to the needs of government customers.” Since 2009, the U.S. government and Lockheed Martin have been evaluating cloud computing—the use of computing and data storage resources that are hosted in an external data center and accessible as consumption-based application services through the network. According to Robert Lamb, “Management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly [i.e. regularly] to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political environment.” (Lamb, 1984)

In the context of a business such as Lockheed Martin and Microsoft, technology has a wide range of potential effects on management:

Reduced costs of operations. For example, Dell Computer Corporation used technology to lower manufacturing and administrative costs, enabling the company to sell computers cheaper than most other vendors.

New product and new market creation. For example, Sony Corporation pioneered the technology of miniaturization to create a whole new class of portable consumer electronics (such as radios, cassette tape recorders, and CD players).

Adaptation to changes in scale and format. In the early part of the twenty-first century, companies addressed how small devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and MP3 players could practically become, as well as how each product could support various features and functions. For example, cell phones began to support email, web browsing, text messaging, and even picture taking as well as phone calls.

Improved customer service. The sophisticated package-tracking system developed by Federal Express enables that company to locate a shipment while in transit and report its status to the customer. With the development of the World Wide Web, customers can find the location of their shipments without even talking to a Federal Express employee.

Reorganized administrative operations. For example, the banking industry has reduced the cost of serving its customers by using technologies such as automated teller machines, toll-free call centers, and the Web. As of early 2005, the cost of a bank transaction conducted by a human teller was approximately $2, compared to $1 for a telephone banking transaction, $.50-1.00 for an ATM transaction, and about ten cents for banking over the Internet. Automated Clearing House (ACH) or “checkless” check processing costs were $.25-.50 per transaction. This reduction in cost could be attributed primarily to reduction the amount of labor involved, which had a profound effect on employment and labor-management relations in banking.

What is “Cloud Computing” and why do we care? Cloud computing has real benefits when it comes to data sharing and it is these advantages which has led to its adaption in multiple organizations at a fairly rapid pace:

Bringing down computing costs in organizations. Most businesses are groaning under the costs of high-end hardware for their employees as apps become more and more resource hungry. Using a cloud to store apps which is accessible to users from a basic terminal brings in a control factor to these costs. Since cost cutting is a major concern these days, the concept of cloud computing is having its day under the sun. · Greater freedom for the cloud users as they can access data and applications from just about anywhere via multiple devices (like terminals, mobile, net books etc). Since the terminals can be quite basic, this helps bring down overall hardware costs as well.

· Centralized and agile…might sound like a dream for some technocrats but it really is true. You can now use cloud computing to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to computing standards, there is practically no down-time and just one implementation of a new application can result 100% implementation. · Security in cloud computing is much better than a scattered network and that is one of the reasons why clouds are working. · Clouds are also comparatively easy to manage and bring down the costs as well as headache of maintenance disparate servers. In fact network managers love cloud computing as it puts everything together in a very organized manner.

With so many benefits and few downsides, cloud computing is the IT industry’s “darling”, the sooner you adapt to it the faster you will be able harness the benefits of this phenomena. Lockheed Martin cloudcomputing strategy is built on a foundation of innovation and partnership. Today cloud computing has become a common way of delivering services via the Internet. This cloud service can be accessed from anywhere on the web: your desktop web browser, mobile phone, tablet PC or even TV. Cloud-based solutions have a number of advantages for business over the traditional way of providing services. Among them these benefits are: cost saving, device and location independence, scalability, reliability, performance, utilization of resources and security. Some of the main areas in cloud application development:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). A fundamental component of any IT solution, this usually consists of visualization environment, networking and storage. IaaS helps to deliver computer infrastructure, such as: network equipment, servers, system software and file space. In the field of IaaS we specialize in implementation of web services and mobile app back-ends, which are based on Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud Hosting, as well as accelerate content delivery by using providers such as Akamai CDN.

Platform as a Service (PaaS). A cloud based solution stack which helps to develop, test, deploy, host and maintain an application using the same integrated development environment (IDE), but without the complexity of maintaining hardware and system software. AltexSoft uses proven Microsoft Visual Studio IDE, innovative Windows Azure platform and offers professional dedicated teams of Azure developers to create different cloud apps, ranging from specialized search engines to consumer applications that could be published and sold through Windows Azure Marketplace. Currently we see Windows Azure development as the fastest way for your product to hit the market and scale without any hardware limits.

Software as a Service (SaaS). Any kind of software hosted together with its data, used on demand and delivered through the Internet. AltexSoft has extensive experience in implementation of specific SaaS solutions in our main business domains.

The company understands that despite the perceived risks, cloud computing can provide fast and flexible access to IT resources for its customers, while lowering the government’s significant ownership costs. In an on-premises IT infrastructure, an agency invests in the purchase, configuration, management, and maintenance of on-site computing hardware and software to meet its IT requirements. By using cloud computing, an agency can subscribe to services and pay for just the resources it uses as it needs them. “The consumption-based cost model in the cloud is extremely appealing to our government customers,” says Greer.

Today, cloud computing is an important component of the federal government’s IT strategy. But Lockheed Martin’s federal government customers must maintain strict control over their systems, and they must use every precaution to protect confidential and often sensitive information. In fact, federal regulations restrict some kinds of government data from being stored outside the government’s direct control. “We can’t talk about cloud computing inside Lockheed Martin without addressing security, access control, and confidentiality,” says Greer. “So our goal is to balance these risks, while helping our customers realizes the promise of cloud computing: speed, agility, and lower costs.”

A Cloud Example

For implementation of the project example above, AltexSoft used one more Microsoft technology – Bing search engine. It carries a function of search requests procession in the project. AltexSoft substantiates its choice by excellent speed of Bing search engine. This is because both Bing and Windows Azure are situated in the area of Microsoft data centers, which have the fastest access to the Internet. To deliver the performance and flexibility of cloud computing to its customers, while addressing their critical security requirements, Lockheed Martin developed the Thundercloud™ (in layman’s terms-a firewall) design pattern in 2009. Design patterns are important tools used by engineers, architects, and software developers to provide technical solutions faster, with consistent compliance to best practices, all at a lower cost. Thundercloud™ helps cloud computing implementers integrate on-premises IT infrastructure with computing, storage, and application services in the cloud and extend those applications to a The Thundercloud™ design pattern from LM has been implemented by using Windows Azure.

Windows Azure is an open cloud platform that enables one to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. The cloud-based application development allows service hosting, and service management environment that provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. By using Thundercloud™, an organization can keep information behind its own firewall, where it retains full control and exclusive use of its data and its own security, privacy, and compliance processes, and it can realize the elastic scale, agility, and cost benefits of cloud computing. By powering Thundercloud™ applications with Windows Azure, LM customers can add or remove computing resources to a solution quickly, paying only for what it uses. “Windows Azure has the elasticity and scalability we need to make Thundercloud™ work,” says Greer. “We can add or subtract computing, storage, and data-transfer resources for mission applications on demand; access the resources from any device via the Internet; and pay for them based on utilization.”

Lockheed Martin developers use the Thundercloud™ design pattern and Windows Azure to build applications for customers, and Lockheed Martin customers can use the Thundercloud™ design pattern to build their own applications. Developers can build Thundercloud™-based applications with familiar tools, such as the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and Microsoft SQL Azure, a self-managed database service built on technologies in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software. Developers can use Windows Azure to enhance Thundercloud™-based applications by integrating on-premises enterprise data sets and security methods to computing resources in the cloud. By using Windows Azure, developers can work with applications that run Windows Azure and the Windows Server 2008 operating system, as well as Java, Ruby, PHP, and other technologies. “All of the standard Microsoft development tools fit right into the Windows Azure framework,” says Greer. “Developers can use the tools they know to build Thundercloud™-based applications and integrate them to the cloud with Windows Azure.”

Biometrics

Biometrics means “life measurement” but the term is usually associated with the use of unique physiological characteristics to identify an individual. The application which most people associate with biometrics is security. However, biometrics identification has eventually a much broader relevance as computer interface becomes more natural. Knowing the person with whom you are conversing is an important part of human interaction and one expects computers of the future to have the same capabilities. Biometrics, an emerging set of technologies promises an effective solution. Biometrics accurately identifies or verifies individuals based upon each person’s unique physical or behavioral characteristics. Leading examples are biometric technologies that recognize and authenticate faces, hands, fingers, signatures, irises, voices, and fingerprints.

A number of biometric traits have been developed and are used to authenticate the person’s identity. The idea is to use the special characteristics of a person to identify him. By using special characteristics that means the using the features such as face, iris, fingerprint, signature, etc. The method of identification based on biometric characteristics is preferred over traditional passwords and PIN based methods for various reasons such as the person to be identified is required to be physically present at the time-of-identification. Identification based on biometric techniques obviates the need to remember a password or carry a token. A biometric system is essentially a pattern recognition system which makes a personal identification by determining the authenticity of a specific physiological or behavioral characteristic possessed by the user. Biometric technologies are thus defined as the “automated methods of identifying or authenticating the identity of a living person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic”.