Ron Van Holst
Ron is a consultant at High Performance Computing Insights Canada. He is an electrical engineer with over 25 years experience in the development and management of telecommunications and High Performance Computing (HPC) products and services. Ron is also certified in the IT service management framework ITIL foundations. His passion is to see HPC technology employed to make Canadian enterprises more globally competitive.
Homepage: http://whyhire.me/ron_van_holst
Posts by Ron Van Holst
I Believe in Miracles
May 21, 2011 - 9:59 pm
Tags: miracle
Posted in 1) Why I Chose IT, Misc | No comments
Now there are two kinds of miracles, the traditional kind which are supernatural events, outside the realm of science and in the realm of the spiritual. Then there are what we call modern miracles, things which were not possible a few years ago, but have been acheived through ingenuity, creativity, application of the latest research, and [...]
Most Canadian Cloud compute cycles will be SMB
May 20, 2011 - 12:33 pm
Tags: 6) Cloud Computing, Canada, SMB
Posted in 6) Cloud Computing | 2 comments
In a previous post, I presented some rationale to support the projection that most cloud compute cycles will be HPC. The principle rationale was that although many HPC applications have requirements not suitable to the cloud, a fourth paradigm of big data will make cloud based HPC a dominant consumer of HPC cycles. In this post I’d [...]
Recognizing Canadian Innovation and Achievement
May 19, 2011 - 2:09 pm
Posted in 1) Why I Chose IT, 4) Social Media Service, Misc | 1 comment
Last night I attended the 26th Annual CATAAlliance Innovation and Leadership Awards Gala Dinner, and I had a chance to meet some of the award winners: Jason Goldberg, founder and president of Ideal Life won the Wellington West Award for Outstanding Product Achievement in ICT/Health/Clean Tech. He started this company several years ago believing he could [...]
Most Cloud Compute cycles will be HPC
May 17, 2011 - 8:58 am
Tags: 3 Open Data, Big Data, Business analytics, Engineering, High Performance Computing, HPC, Microsoft, Science, Technology Adoption, The Fourth Paradigm, Virtualization
Posted in 6) Cloud Computing | 2 comments
A few months ago, I was chatting with a friend on the phone about HPC when he made the statement which is the title of this post. I jotted it down, and it’s been rattling around in my brain ever since. At first it seemed very odd, HPC is a neiche market, a small proportion [...]
Dark Clouds over Canada
May 13, 2011 - 2:09 pm
Tags: 6) Cloud Computing, Cloud Security, cyber criminals, digital economy strategy, Friday the 13th, google, silver lining, Trend Micro
Posted in 6) Cloud Computing | 5 comments
I attended the Trend Micro seminar in Ottawa last week, where their CTO opened the talk on Cloud Computing security with the term ‘Dark Clouds’. Rafael Ruffolo covered that same seminar in Toronto the next day with this article, but he didn’t mention the dark clouds opening analogy (maybe he had a different opening for the [...]
BYOT – what are your requirements?
May 11, 2011 - 5:18 pm
Tags: apple, blackberry, BYOT, devices, requirements analysis, Windows, work life balance
Posted in 5) Bring Your Own Technology, 6) Cloud Computing | 1 comment
I’ve been thinking about this week’s theme of BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) to work, and how I can add value to the excellent posts already written. So it’s inevitable; not only will devices be selected by end users (even purchased by end users), these devices will take increasing diversity of form. Desktops, laptops, servers [...]
the best social media service depends on YOU
May 5, 2011 - 9:42 am
Tags: blogging, Canadian, dialog, LinkedIn, SMART board, social media, twitter, WhyHire.me, youtube
Posted in 4) Social Media Service | 2 comments
The question being considered in this category is “the best social media service for IT”. Well that depends. What is best depends on your requirements. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to accomplish anything with social media? Remember the old adage, if you don’t aim at anything, you’re sure to hit it. Personally, [...]
Shopping for a smartphone – part 3 – freedom to innovate
April 30, 2011 - 3:36 pm
Tags: Canadian Tire, Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation, electronic identity, electronic wallet, facebook, innovation, Quality of Service, Skype, Smartphones, SOA, social media
Posted in 1) Why I Chose IT, 3) Tablets and Mobility, 4) Social Media Service | 1 comment
This has been a crazy week for me, perhaps if I already had my smartphone, I might have been able to complete this post earlier. With this third post, I’m getting to the heart of what I’m looking for in a smartphone purchase. In my first post, I rambled about my rationale behind wanting an [...]
Shopping for a smartphone – part 2 – bright & shiny objects
April 26, 2011 - 1:43 pm
Tags: AMOLED, bright and shiny, crows, drop test, hardware, overclocking, smartphone display, Smartphones, virtual keyboard
Posted in 3) Tablets and Mobility | No comments
Thanks Kevin for commenting on my first post in this series, and adding the “bright and shiny” requirement to the requirements analysis, which fits naturally into this post on hardware. When I think of bright and shiny objects, my brain immediately makes the association with crows, and their reputation for collecting bright and shiny objects. [...]
Shopping for a smartphone – part 1
April 25, 2011 - 9:47 pm
Tags: Early Adopter, look a gift horse in the mouth, Motorola, requirements analysis, service plan, Smartphones, wireless carriers
Posted in 3) Tablets and Mobility | 4 comments
I’m a bit embarrassed, but I don’t have a smartphone. I look around me and everyone has a smartphone, even kids have smartphones. Even some my kids have smartphones. I don’t consider myself a late adopter, maybe just for things that are hard on my personal budget. I experimented with an 8 bit Motorola 6800 developers kit (hexadecimal keypad [...]
Don’t forget to smell the roses
April 21, 2011 - 6:08 pm
Tags: cat, cycling, Magnolia, self evident, work life balance
Posted in 2) Strategies | 2 comments
Since Kevin is posting pictures of his dog Isabel; I might as well add one of our cat Ebony before I sign off for the long weekend. I was thinking along similar lines to Kevin’s post on powering down to get some sleep. I believe that there are times when we need to turn off the technology [...]
That is what you should NOT do …
April 20, 2011 - 11:04 am
Tags: automation, Berenstain, bicycle, growth, institutionalized learning, iso9000, IT Leadership, Process, productivity
Posted in 2) Strategies | 5 comments
… so let that be a lesson to you. These words are etched into my mind, having read them countless times to my children when they were small. It’s a reminder that we all learn from our mistakes, even parents, and that it’s even better if we can learn from other’s mistakes too. This is [...]
Management that motivates
April 18, 2011 - 9:12 pm
Tags: IT Leadership, Management
Posted in 2) Strategies | 1 comment
Although I’ve had roles where I had staff reporting to me, and even more roles where I had to manage teams through influence alone, I thought I might get the best collection of thoughts on motivating IT staff by looking back at the managers I’ve had and what worked well and what didn’t for motivating [...]
Technology re-use = innovation
April 15, 2011 - 11:35 am
Tags: graphics processing unit, innovation, kinect, Microsoft, supercomputing, technology re-use, top500
Posted in 2) Strategies, 5) Bring Your Own Technology | 4 comments
I came across this interesting video while checking on those I follow on Twitter; this is really cool: I’ve never been much into video games, but the technology can be leveraged for more interesting things as seen in the video above. Innovation usually isn’t about anything brand new, but often re-using something designed for one purpose and [...]
My Life 2.0
April 14, 2011 - 3:15 pm
Tags: Bell Northern Research, consultant, IT career, supercomputing
Posted in 1) Why I Chose IT | 2 comments
I identify with Don Sheppard in his post; I didn’t choose IT, it just crept up on me. I’m a more ‘recent’ grad than Don (recent being a highly relative term in this case), graduating from engineering school in 1985. In ‘My Life 1.0‘, I began in the telecommunications industry, although it didn’t feel too [...]
