I am an IBMer…

As I indicated earlier, I left Intel to pursue an outstanding opportunity in the same space. I know I kept this as a surprise while I went on vacation and didn’t write much, which led to some speculation on where I was going…so here it is. I am going back to IBM after being away for four years – a (sweet) homecoming of sorts :).

When I left Intel, I was seriously considering another opportunity, equally good. But I got to talk to some of my old pals at IBM and learned that they were looking for someone with my skills. Couldn’t hurt, I thought, talking to them. Well, now I am an IBMer!

Enterprise IOT: Mixed Model Architecture

– By Andy Thurai (@andythurai)

This article was originally published on VentureBeat.

Recently, there has been a lot of debate about how IoT (Internet of Things) affects your architecture, security model and your corporate liability issues. Many companies seem to think they can solve these problems by centralizing the solution, and thus collectively enforcing it in the hub, moving as far away from the data collection centers (not to be confused with data centers). There is also a lot of talk about hub-and-spoke model winning this battle. Recently, Sanjay Sarma of MIT, a pioneer in the IoT space, spoke on this very topic at MassTLC (where I was fortunate enough to present as well). But based on what I am seeing in the field, based on how the actual implementations work, I disagree with this one size fits all notion.

A Proud Storytelling Moment: Know Your Elevator Pitches

– By @AndyThurai

This story originally featured on Innovation Insights @ Wired magazine.

The year was 2002. Right after 9/11 everyone was hurting, especially the telco sector got almost wiped out – Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, Avaya, Worldcom, MCI, and the list goes on. Some of them got completely wiped out, and some of them resurfaced years later. Anyway, the story is not about them.

I was working for Nortel at that time. I got laid off sometime in 2002, along with our entire division, when the impact hit the company. Sitting at home, living off severance and my wife’s salary/benefits, the opportunities were very hard to come by. Even the ones far and few between were crowded with lines of people wearing suits like in that movie Dick & Jane.