Big data. There are few conversations in the IT community which do not start, address, or end on the topic. Some conversations are visionary in nature, some critical, and many considering the challenges we’ll need to overcome in the process of understanding how to deal with big data.
Definitions of big data almost parallel the 3 V’s of big data, which are velocity, volume, and variety. We may call it a byproduct of massive data growth, cheap technology, and our ability to save everything. We may address the enormous volumes of data generated by social media, smart grids, and other online transactions.
However we also need to compress those ideas into a form we can understand and use as a basis for our discussions. For simplicity, we’ll use Gartner’s definition that “big data are high volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision-making, insight discovery and process optimization.”
Enhanced decision-making? Insight discovery? Process optimization? Outstanding opportunities to enhance our decision support process. Just corral all the data available to us, and voila, we’re competitive on a global scale.
One minor snag – we’ll need to recruit skilled technical and business staff with both the skills and business experience needed to effectively exploit the potential of big data, as well as establish value to business, government, and quality of life.
In a well-quoted study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), data is presented supporting the idea big data to ultimately become a key factor in competition, and competitiveness across all public and private sectors. The study also states that just in the United States we will have a shortfall of nearly 190,000 skilled professionals in deep analytics, coders, and mathematical abilities.
The Australian Workspend Institute acknowledges there is a shortage of talent, and that shortage is getting worse. Stating that the Australian mining, oil, and gas industries have identified a shortfall of 100,000 skilled engineers, the “war for talent” is further running up the cost of labor for staff with deep analytical skills across-the-board.
Boston company NewVantage Partners published the results of an executive survey of leading Fortune 1000 companies adding only 2% of those listed companies felt they had no challenges finding talent and skilled resources needed to understand and exploit big data.
Is it really that important to be on top of big data?
A 29 March 2012 press release from the Executive Office of the President (US) unveiling the country’s “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” stated “by improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to solve some of the nation’s most pressing problems.”
Perhaps crime? BBC Horizon’s aired a special on big data in early 2013, highlighting the efforts of Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) use of big data and analytics in predicting crime. Collecting crime data from over 30 million records in LA, demographics, geospatial, and other historical data from both LA and around the world, LAPD uses analytics to predict down to 300sqft when and where a crime will likely occur. With uncanny, almost creepy results.
Health information? Climate change? Mining? Earthquakes? Planets which may support human life?
Given the amount of data available, data being created, and the ability of intelligent data scientists to create models of the data value, most believe those who can harvest big data will gain significant advantage.
So what do we do, give up on big data and focus on other activities?
In a recent Forbes article on big data author Ben Woo from Neuralytix wrote ”when it comes to big data, we believe if you’re not doing it, your competitors are!”
The United States still holds a significant advantage, leading the world in individuals with skill and experience in deep analytics. According to the MGI the US, China, India, and Russia lead the world in gross numbers of capable data scientists, while Poland and Romania are graduating the highest numbers of students skilled in deep analytics.
As noted, as the world continues to embrace the science of data, those skilled individuals will continue in demand. CIO Magazine notes that “CIOs are competing for workers with strong math skills, proficiency working with massive data bases, and emerging database technologies, in addition to workers with expertise in search, data, integration, and business knowledge.”
Those skills CIO believe are the most difficult to find and recruit include:
- Advanced analytics and predictive analysis skills
- Complex event processing skills
- Rule management skills
- Business intelligence (BI) skills
- Data integration skills
David Foote, Foote Partner’s Chief Research Officer writes that “many colleges and universities haven’t yet risen to the challenge of teaching the skills that are potentially needed for analytics jobs.
Industry may be rising to the need, partnering with universities to form the National Consortium for Data Science (NCDS). According to a paper done by the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC), the agenda for NCDS is to better align the university programs with the needs of private sector (and government).
UNC further advises 4 steps human resources and talent management organizations can take to bridge skills and talent shortfalls in deep data and big data analytics include:
- Educating themselves about big data. If the organization does not understand big data at an operational level, it is unlikely they will be able to recruit skilled data scientists who do understand the concept.
- Educate managers and senior leaders about big data.
- Develop creative strategies to recruit and retain big data talent.
- Offer plans and solutions on how to build the talent in-house.
NOTE: As a particularly positive note for Southern California readers, California State University – Long Beach (Long Beach State ) was identified in UNC’s report as one of the few schools in the world with a strong , focused deep data analytics program.
While there is no immediate solution to the global shortfall in big data talent, we are finally awakening to the need. The academic community will need to consider, design, and implement curriculum and programs to acknowledge the need for graduates capable of dealing with big data. This means back to the basic of mathematics, statistics, analytics, and other disciplines which will graduate capable data scientists.
The Internet, computers, and ability to collect data has changed our world, and created many difficult challenges in our ability to understand the opportunities. Time to step up to the challenge.
A good indication any new technology or business model is starting to mature is the number of certifications popping up related to that product, framework, or service. Cloud computing is certainly no exception, with vendors such as Microsoft, Google, VMWare, 
and IBM offering certification training for their own products, as well as organizations such CompTIA and Architura competing for industry neutral certifications.
Is this all hype, or is it an essential part of the emerging cloud computing ecosystem? Can we remember the days when entry level Cisco, Microsoft, or other vendor certifications were almost mocked by industry elitists?
Much like the early Internet days of eEverything, cloud computing is at the point where most have heard the term, few understand the concepts, and marketing folk are exploiting every possible combination of the words to place their products in a favorable, forward leaning light.
So, what if executive management takes a basic course in cloud computing principles, or sales and customer service people take a Cloud 101 course? Is that bad?
Of course not. Cloud computing has the potential of being transformational to business, governments, organization, and even individuals. Business leaders need to understand the potential and impact of what a service-oriented cloud computing infrastructure might mean to their organization, the game-changing potential of integration and interoperability, the freedom of mobility, and the practical execution of basic cloud computing characteristics within their ICT environment.
A certification is not all about getting the test, and certificate. As an instructor for the CompTIA course, I manage classes of 20 or more students ranging from engineers, to network operations center staff, to customer service and sales, to mid-level executives. We’ve yet to encounter an individual who claims they have learned nothing from attending the course, and most leave the course with a very different viewpoint of cloud computing than held prior to the class.
As with most technology driven topics, cloud computing does break into different branches – including technical, operations, and business utility.
The underlying technologies of cloud computing are probably the easiest part of the challenge, as ultimately skills will develop based on time, experience, and operation of cloud-related technologies.
The more difficult challenge is understanding the impact of cloud computing may mean to an organization, both internally as well as on a global scale. No business-related discussion of cloud computing is complete without consideration of service-oriented architectures, enterprise architectures, interoperability, big data, disaster management, and continuity of operations.
Business decisions on data center consolidation, ICT outsourcing, and other aspects of the current technology refresh or financial consideration will be more effective and structured when accompanied by a basic business and high level understanding of cloud computing underlying technologies. As an approach to business transformation, additional complimentary capabilities in enterprise architecture, service-oriented architectures, and IT service management will certainly help senior decision makers best understand the relationship between cloud computing and their organizational planning.
While reading the news, clipping stories, and self-study may help decision makers understand the basic components of cloud computing and other supporting technologies. Taking an introduction cloud computing course, regardless if vendor training or neutral, will give enough background knowledge to at least engage in the conversation. Given the hype surrounding cloud computing, and the potential long term consequences of making an uniformed decision, the investment in cloud computing training must be considered valuable at all levels of the organization, from technical to senior management.
The current technology refresh cycle presents many opportunities, and challenges to both organizations and governments. The potential of service-oriented architectures, interoperability, collaboration, and continuity of operations is an attractive outcome of technologies and business models available today. The challenges are more related to business processes and human factors, both of which require organizational transformations to take best advantage of the collaborative environments enabled through use of cloud computing and access to broadband communications.
Gaining the most benefit from planning an interoperable environment for governments and organizations may be facilitated through use of business tools such as cloud computing. Cloud computing and underlying technologies may create an operational environment supporting many strategic objectives being considered within government and private sector organizations.
Reaching target architectures and capabilities is not a single action, and will require a clear understanding of current “as-is” baseline capabilities, target requirements, the gaps or capabilities need to reach the target, and establishing a clear transitional plan to bring the organization from a starting “as-is” baseline to the target goal.
To most effectively reach that goal requires an understanding of the various contributing components within the transformational ecosystem. In addition, planners must keep in mind the goal is not implementation of technologies, but rather consideration of technologies as needed to facilitate business and operations process visions and goals.
Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture
Information technology, particularly communications-enabled technology has enhanced business process, education, and the quality of life for millions around the world. However, traditionally ICT has created silos of information which is rarely integrated or interoperable with other data systems or sources.
As the science of enterprise architecture development and modeling, service-oriented architectures, and interoperability frameworks continue to force the issue of data integration and reuse, ICT developers are looking to reinforce open standards allowing publication of external interfaces and application programming interfaces.
Cloud computing, a rapidly maturing framework for virtualization, standardized data, application, and interface structure technologies, offers a wealth of tools to support development of both integrated and interoperable ICT resources within organizations, as well as among their trading, shared, or collaborative workflow community.
The Institute for Enterprise Architecture Development defines enterprise architecture (EA) as a “complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which acts as a collaboration force between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks”
ICT, including utilities such as cloud computing, should focus on supporting the holistic objectives of organizations implementing an EA. Non-interoperable or shared data will generally have less value than reusable data, and will greatly increase systems reliability and data integrity.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)
Recent surveys of governments around the world indicate in most cases limited or no disaster management or continuity of operations planning. The risk of losing critical national data resources due to natural or man-made disasters is high, and the ability for most governments maintain government and citizen services during a disaster is limited based on the amount of time (recovery time objective/RTO) required to restart government services, as well as the point of data restoral (recovery point objective /RPO).
In existing ICT environments, particularly those with organizational and data resource silos, RTOs and RPOs can be extended to near indefinite if both a data backup plan, as well as systems and service restoral resource capacity is not present. This is particularly acute if the processing environment includes legacy mainframe computer applications which do not have a mirrored recovery capacity available upon failure or loss of service due to disaster.
Cloud computing can provide a standards-based environment that fully supports near zero RTO/RPO requirements. With the current limitation of cloud computing being based on Intel-compatible architectures, nearly any existing application or data source can be migrated into a virtual resource pool. Once within the cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment, setting up distributed processing or backup capacity is relatively uncomplicated, assuming the environment has adequate broadband access to the end user and between processing facilities.
Cloud computing-enabled BCDR also opens opportunities for developing either PPPs, or considering the potential of outsourcing into public or commercially operated cloud computing compute, storage, and communications infrastructure. Again, the main limitation being the requirement for portability between systems.
Transformation Readiness
ICT modernization will drive change within all organizations. Transformational readiness is not a matter of technology, but a combination of factors including rapidly changing business models, the need for many-to-many real-time communications, flattening of organizational structures, and the continued entry of technology and communications savvy employees into the workforce.
The potential of outsourcing utility compute, storage, application, and communications will eliminate the need for much physical infrastructure, such as redundant or obsolete data centers and server closets. Roles will change based on the expected shift from physical data centers and ICT support hardware to virtual models based on subscriptions and catalogs of reusable application and process artifacts.
A business model for accomplishing ICT modernization includes cloud computing, which relies on technologies such as server and storage resource virtualization, adding operational characteristics including on-demand resource provisioning to reduce the time needed to procure ICT resources needed to respond to emerging operational or other business opportunities.
IT management and service operations move from a workstation environment to a user interface driven by SaaS. The skills needed to drive ICT within the organization will need to change, becoming closer to the business, while reducing the need to manage complex individual workstations.
IT organizations will need to change, as organizations may elect to outsource most or all of their underlying physical data center resources to a cloud service provider, either in a public or private environment. This could eliminate the need for some positions, while driving new staffing requirements in skills related to cloud resource provisioning, management, and development.
Business unit managers may be able to take advantage of other aspects of cloud computing, including access to on-demand compute, storage, and applications development resources. This may increase their ability to quickly respond to rapidly changing market conditions and other emerging opportunities. Business unit managers, product developers, and sales teams will need to become familiar with their new ICT support tools. All positions from project managers to sales support will need to quickly acquire skills necessary to take advantage of these new tools.
The Role of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a business representation of a large number of underlying technologies. Including virtualization, development environment, and hosted applications, cloud computing provides a framework for developing standardized service models, deployment models, and service delivery characteristics.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a definition of cloud computing accepted throughout the ICT industry.
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.“
While organizations face decisions related to implementing challenges related to developing enterprise architectures and interoperability, cloud computing continues to rapidly develop as an environment with a rich set of compute, communication, development, standardization, and collaboration tools needed to meet organizational objectives.
Data security, including privacy, is different within a cloud computing environment, as the potential for data sharing is expanded among both internal and potentially external agencies. Security concerns are expanded when questions of infrastructure multi-tenancy, network access to hosted applications (Software as a Service / SaaS), and governance of authentication and authorization raise questions on end user trust of the cloud provider.
A move to cloud computing is often associated with data center consolidation initiatives within both governments and large organizations. Cloud delivery models, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) support the development of virtual data centers.
While it is clear long term target architectures for most organizations will be an environment with a single data system, in the short term it may be more important to decommission high risk server closets and unmanaged servers into a centralized, well-managed data center environment offering on-demand access to compute, storage, and network resources – as well as BCDR options.
Even at the most basic level of considering IaaS and PaaS as a replacement environment to physical infrastructure, the benefits to the organization may become quickly apparent. If the organization establishes a “cloud first” policy to force consolidation of inefficient or high risk ICT resources, and that environment further aligns the organization through the use of standardized IT components, the ultimate goal of reaching interoperability or some level of data integration will become much easier, and in fact a natural evolution.
Nearly all major ICT-related hardware and software companies are re-engineering their product development to either drive cloud computing, or be cloud-aware. Microsoft has released their Office 365 suite of online and hosted environments, as has Google with both PaaS and SaaS tools such as the Google Apps Engine and Google Docs.
The benefits of organizations considering a move to hosted environments, such as MS 365, are based on access to a rich set of applications and resources available on-demand, using a subscription model – rather than licensing model, offering a high level of standardization to developers and applications.
Users comfortable with standard office automation and productivity tools will find the same features in a SaaS environment, while still being relieved of individual software license costs, application maintenance, or potential loss of resources due to equipment failure or theft. Hosted applications also allow a persistent state, collaborative real-time environment for multi-users requiring access to documents or projects. Document management and single source data available for reuse by applications and other users, reporting, and performance management becomes routine, reducing the potential and threat of data corruption.
The shortfalls, particularly for governments, is that using a large commercial cloud infrastructure and service provider such as Microsoft may require physically storing data in location outside of their home country, as well as forcing data into a multi-tenant environment which may not meet security requirements for organizations.
Cloud computing offers an additional major feature at the SaaS level that will benefit nearly all organizations transitioning to a mobile workforce. SaaS by definition is platform independent. Users access SaaS applications and underlying data via any device offering a network connection, and allowing access to an Internet-connected address through a browser. The actual intelligence in an application is at the server or virtual server, and the user device is simply a dumb terminal displaying a portal, access point, or the results of a query or application executed through a command at the user screen.
Cloud computing continues to develop as a framework and toolset for meeting business objectives. Cloud computing is well-suited to respond to rapidly changing business and organizational needs, as the characteristics of on-demand access to infrastructure resources, rapid elasticity, or the ability to provision and de-provision resources as needed to meet processing and storage demand, and organization’s ability to measure cloud computing resource use for internal and external accounting mark a major change in how an organization budgets ICT.
As cloud computing matures, each organization entering a technology refresh cycle must ask the question “are we in the technology business, or should we concentrate our efforts and budget in efforts directly supporting realizing objectives?” If the answer is the latter, then any organization should evaluate outsourcing their ICT infrastructure to an internal or commercial cloud service provider.
It should be noted that today most cloud computing IaaS service platforms will not support migration of mainframe applications, such as those written for a RISC processor. Those application require redevelopment to operate within an Intel-compatible processing environment.
Broadband Factor
Cloud computing components are currently implemented over an Internet Protocol network. Users accessing SaaS application will need to have network access to connect with applications and data. Depending on the amount of graphics information transmitted from the host to an individual user access terminal, poor bandwidth or lack of broadband could result in an unsatisfactory experience.
In addition, BCDR requires the transfer of potentially large amounts of data between primary and backup locations. Depending on the data parsing plan, whether mirroring data, partial backups, full backups, or live load balancing, data transfer between sites could be restricted if sufficient bandwidth is not available between sites.
Cloud computing is dependent on broadband as a means of connecting users to resources, and data transfer between sites. Any organization considering implementing cloud computing outside of an organization local area network will need to fully understand what shortfalls or limitations may result in the cloud implementation not meeting objectives.
The Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI)
Governments and other organizations are entering a technology refresh cycle based on existing ICT hardware and software infrastructure hitting the end of life. In addition, as the world aggressively continues to break down national and technical borders, the need for organizations to reconsider the creation, use, and management of data supporting both mission critical business processes, as well as decision support systems will drive change.
Given the clear direction industry is taking to embrace cloud computing services, as well as the awareness existing siloed data structures within many organizations would better serve the organization in a service-oriented framework, it makes sense to consider an integrated approach.
A SOCCI considers both, adding reference models and frameworks which will also add enterprise architecture models such as TOGAF to ultimately provide a broad, mature framework to support business managers and IT managers in their technology and business refresh planning process.
SOCCIs promote the use of architectural building blocks, publication of external interfaces for each application or data source developed, single source data, reuse of data and standardized application building block, as well as development and use of enterprise service buses to promote further integration and interoperability of data.
A SOCCI will look at elements of cloud computing, such as virtualized and on-demand compute/storage resources, and access to broadband communications – including security, encryption, switching, routing, and access as a utility. The utility is always available to the organization for use and exploitation. Higher level cloud components including PaaS and SaaS add value, in addition to higher level entry points to develop the ICT tools needed to meet the overall enterprise architecture and service-orientation needed to meet organizational needs.
According to the Open Group a SOCCI framework provides the foundation for connecting a service-oriented infrastructure with the utility of cloud computing. As enterprise architecture and interoperability frameworks continue to gain in value and importance to organizations, this framework will provide additional leverage to make best use of available ICT tools.
The Bottom Line on ICT Modernization
The Internet Has reached nearly every point in the world, providing a global community functioning within an always available, real-time communications infrastructure. University and primary school graduates are entering the workforce with social media, SaaS, collaboration, and location transparent peer communities diffused in their tacit knowledge and experience.
This environment has greatly flattened any leverage formerly developed countries, or large monopoly companies have enjoyed during the past several technology and market cycles.
An organization based on non-interoperable or standardized data, and no BCDR protection will certainly risk losing a competitive edge in a world being created by technology and data aware challengers.
Given the urgency organizations face to address data security, continuity of operations, agility to respond to market conditions, and operational costs associated with traditional ICT infrastructure, many are looking to emerging technology frameworks such as cloud computing to provide a model for planning solutions to those challenges.
Cloud computing and enterprise architecture frameworks provide guidance and a set of tools to assist organizations in providing structure, and infrastructure needed to accomplish ICT modernization objectives.
We all know the buildings, One Wilshire, The Westin Building, 60 Hudson, Telehouse (UK), 200 Paul, 1102 Grand – all buildings advertising dozens, or even hundreds of carriers using the properties for interconnections at the fiber and network level. Meet-me-rooms are crowded, ladder racks full, and each property sits in the middle of the central business district in large cities.
At one point, rumors circled the industry that if One Wilshire had a catastrophic failure of infrastructure that global communications may be set back to the mid 1960s. True or not, the building’s meet-me-room supports hundreds of interconnections which are single-threaded connecting carriers in distant countries and continents.
All in buildings designed to house office users. All buildings with little or no potential for external security. All buildings with challenges for internal electrical distribution, cooling, and Fiber infrastructure that is not going away anytime soon.
The Internet, and what the internet is likely to evolve in the future, will be a combination of high performance wireless access and fixed access connecting every square centimeter of countries to what we are now calling the Fourth Utility. The Fourth Utility being a marriage of broadband infrastructure and cloud computing infrastructure.
As a utility, the infrastructure should be envisioned, planned, and implemented as basic infrastructure, with compromise only considered to accommodate exceptions, such as legal limitations or geological limitations. Where we need to interconnect segments of this infrastructure, as in carrier hotels, the interconnection points should be designed as infrastructure, and not a compromise.
Of course this is not surprising. Carrier hotels by design evolved from a need to find methods for competitive carriers and networks to directly interconnect without the requirement to use an incumbent or formerly monopoly carrier as a transit point. During the period of global telecom deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s those carriers scrambled to find common interconnection points near metro and long distance fiber routes.
Locations offering a neutral location in close proximity to major metro, long distance, and transcontinental submarine cable routes were found in the central business districts (CBDs) of Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, New York, and London. Most of those locations (exception Miami/NAP of the Americas) did not have the space, nor did carriers have the money, to construct a proper central office-grade facility in the CBD to accommodate the electronic switches and muxes needed to support the carriers.
Thus the most suitable, and available, office building was selected to meet the most basic needs of the carriers.
During the 1990s global telecom deregulation progressed and changes in ownership of submarine cables allowed large numbers of international carriers to establish a presence in the carrier meet-me-rooms (MMRs) in buildings such as One Wilshire. The MMRs were operated by building landlords, with little or no telecom industry operational experience, resulting in installations which were far below normal telecom industry standards.
While MMRs have improved greatly during the past few years, the reality is we have a tremendous amount of national infrastructure being built into properties not designed for the telecom industry – infrastructure that will continue being more and more essential to our ability both as a nation, and as a member of the global economic and social community.
The United States should view telecom and cloud computing as a utility, critical to the national infrastructure. Standards that follow the same principles of roads, water, and electrical distribution must be applied to the telecom industry, including carrier hotels and other implementations contributing to the Fourth Utility.
The telecom industry must not accept new MMR or carrier hotel infrastructure that is not a design custom suited to the needs of carriers requiring interconnections. In addition, no infrastructure can tolerate single points of failure on the backbone. You cannot control a point of failure at all access points, much like an access road washing out during a flood – however the backbone must have resiliency and redundancy.
Here is a call to action for the telecom industry. Do not accept, support, contribute to, or participate in infrastructure deployments which do not provide levels of both operational and physical security needed to ensure our critical Fourth Utility of telecom infrastructure needed to protect our national and global interests.
Note: This is part three of a series on the issue of pet stores selling puppies in Burbank (California), whether the city should prevent sales of puppies in Burbank, and a greater issue of animal abuse through the distribution of puppies produced in “puppy mills.” The series was originally posted at BurbankNBeyond by the author.
By John Savageau
BurbankNBeyond
As of January 2013 there is only one remaining pet store selling puppies in Burbank. That is Peggy Woods Pet Emporium. Another pet store, Millennium Pets, stopped selling puppies in 2012, although they still sell birds, reptiles, and pet supplies.
Interviews with pet store owners, including Ira Lippman from Peggy Woods Pet Emporium and Vahe from Millennium Pets indicates animals rights groups, including BurbankCROPS and Best Friends Animal Society have put tremendous pressure on their operations, with frequent visits by members who informally inspect their facilities, subjectively documenting conditions within the facility for use in either discrediting or exposing violations within the shop.
Other pet store owners, including Anne Gaffney at Pet Haven, insist pet stores can do just fine without selling puppies, and the number of rescues available, or dogs from local breeders eliminate the need for pet stores to ship in puppies from puppy mills in the Mid-West.
As Peggy Woods Pet Emporium is the last pet store in Burbank selling puppies, Ira Lippman has the most to lose from any city council decision that may prevent sales of puppies at pet stores in Burbank. BurbankNBeyond did an extended interview with Lippman to get a better perspective on his position regarding the issue of puppy sales, puppy mills, and the motivation of animal rights groups which oppse his business model.
BurbankNBeyond: Why do you think this whole issue came up?
Ira Lippman: There are a number of reasons. One, there is a national issue with some of the humane groups that just don’t want puppies to be sold. They just don’t feel that animals should be sold.
So they use many tactics. The one that’s carrying this is the Best Friends Group. And they (animal rights groups) are doing it state by state, local by local, to stop the sale of puppies. They go to communities without pet stores and go to communities with little resistance and get the city councils to pass ordinances just to stop the sale of puppies.
They have their own agenda in that they do (pet) adoptions. And they bring animals from other places to find homes in these communities.
Our Burbank shelter does not have excess animals. We don’t have a problem in Burbank. They (Burbank Animal Shelter) “lottery” animals, so people (who want to adopt) are often disappointed.
We feel people deserve to have a choice in where they get their pet.
BurbankNBeyond: So an organization like Best Friends, are they saying that if I want a husky puppy, that I don’t have the right to purchase a husky puppy?
Ira Lippman: They are saying they don’t want you to purchase it in a pet store. They are saying they want you to adopt animals. They don’t think you should be getting pure breeds, unless they have them for adoption.
They do a service that is a nice service, but not everyone wants to get an adopted animal. There are differences of opinions.
When you raise a puppy in your home it develops the fabric of your family, its personality, the characteristics that it has.
BurbankNBeyond: But what about the high numbers of animals being euthanized, over population, those issues raised by the animal rights groups?
Ira Lippman: They (animals rights groups) blame this over-population on the pet stores. Our puppies never end up in the shelters. They (regulators) know where our puppies go. We are not the problem.
BurbankNBeyond: Is there anything nefarious about the animal rights groups?
Ira Lippman: I don’t like the idea they don’t want me to be in business. They are part of this greater idea that people shouldn’t be able to buy pets. They challenge pet ownership. They feel people should just adopt them.
I’m OK with adoption. We support a lot of adoptions. I think it is a really nice thing. But why shouldn’t we have choice? In America we deserve choice.
If people don’t want to buy a puppy it’s OK.
We are part of the community. We provide programs for middle school kids to come and get service hours to walk puppies and learn to take care of them and socialize them.
BurbankNBeyond: What about puppy mills?
Ira Lippman: It’s an emotional issue. This whole puppy mill issue. I don’t support puppy mills. They are substandard breeders. Many of our dogs and cats (that we sell) come from our community. We don’t just get our puppies from professional breeders, we also get them from local community members. We provide a service to find a home for puppies they have.
We don’t have a problem in our community. This group (Best Friends) came into our community to push their agenda. They go to lots of communities and push their agenda. They rally people, and they want you to adopt their animals.
BurbankNBeyond: What do they get out of it?
Ira Lippman: Well they make money. It is a multi-million dollar organization. They get donations, they get fees for doing whatever their business is, they get fees for whatever. They get to work under the umbrella of a non-profit.
I don’t have a problem with people going to (local hobby and small) breeders and get a puppy. I don’t have a problem with that. It is not easy to find a breeder to get a puppy. You don’t know if that is necessarily a good puppy to buy. Depending on the breeder you go to most breeders have no regulation.
So what happens when you take away a legal vehicle for people to buy something? You go underground. There are huge Internet and street corner sales of puppies. The people want to have a pet, and if you don’t have a vehicle for them to buy it they find it somewhere else. There will always be a source.
Those groups are not regulated at all. The adoption organizations also have no regulations at all. None.
All the state and local laws are exempted to the adoption groups.
If they sell a puppy and it gets sick you don’t really know what that puppy is going to be like. You don’t really know the history. You are stuck with it, and you have no recourse whatsoever.
We (pet store owners and professional breeders) are a highly regulated industry. For example in California we have the Polanco Act. We abide by it fully.
Excerpt from “Polanco Act”
The Lockyer-Polanco-Farr Pet Protection Act requires pet dealers (i.e., retail sellers of more than 50 dogs or cats in the previous year; not including animal shelters and humane societies) to have a permit, maintain certain health and safety standards for their animals, sell only healthy animals, and provide written spay-neuter, health, animal history and other information and disclosures to pet buyers.
If after 15 days from purchase a dog or cat becomes ill due to an illness that existed at the time of sale, or if within one year after purchase a dog or cat has a congenital or hereditary condition that adversely affects the health of the dog or cat, an owner is offered a refund, another puppy or kitten, or reimbursement of veterinary bills up to 150 percent of the purchase price of the puppy or kitten.
The Pet Store Animal Care Act, effective in 2009, requires every pet store that sells live companion animals and fish to formulate a documented program consisting of routine care, preventative care, emergency care, disease control and prevention, veterinary treatment, and euthanasia. (HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 122125-122220)
Burbank Animal Control does a monthly inspection visit to the store, and we abide by all laws and regulations. We don’t have a problem.
BurbankNBeyond: Where do you think this is going to go in Burbank?
Ira Lippman: I don’t know. They are very, very vigilant group that are backing this policy. They go from town to town, they are a profession, they have huge budgets to make this happen. They rally up the people, put pressure on the council people, and people get emotional about it.
But we don’t have a problem in Burbank. And I try to explain, “why chase business away from Burbank?”
We (pet shop owners) are not causing the over-abundance of animals in the pet shelters. Again we are highly regulated. Even as much as how we keep the animals in our store. How we sell them, where they come from – everybody know the parents, what their birth dates were – those things have to be (on a )5 page document with a written guarantee. At least three veterinarians have seen that dog before it ever goes home.
The puppies come (to us) in a beautifully outfitted transportation facility (provided by Hunte Corporation). They are all independently housed and they have a controlled environment. They have 24 hour care. They drive straight through from wherever they are coming from (Hunte’s distribution facility is in Goodman, MO).
Their facility, you can see it online, is beautiful.
I believe Hunte wrote a letter to every city council person and invited them to come see their facilities. And for them to base their decisions on facts. These groups (animal rights groups) don’t let facts get in their way.
They are really savvy. They have training in warfare. They’re good at what they do. I understand that.
BurbankNBeyond: What do you expect from the upcoming debate at the city council meeting?
Ira Lippman: We are hoping the council makes their decision based on factual information
Lippman claims they do not buy puppies from mills. He noted staff from his store had visited breeders, visited the Hunte Corporation, and were satisfied both were providing a safe and healthy environment for puppies. In addition, he has the ability to view and select puppies online through the Hunte website, ordering only those animals which meet the following criteria:
- Meet their specific requirements
- Come from “approved” breeders
- Have a complete audit trail and documentation
If they find an animal that is provided by a breeder which is not on their “approved” list, they will go through the USDA website and check for compliance or violations prior to placing an order.
BurbankNBeyond: Do you ever procure puppies from local sources?
Ira Lippman: Yes. In the past 60 days we have offered puppies from at least five different litters, including a St. Bernard litter and a Maltese litter.
Lippman continues that it is not always possible to get the breeds needed for their customers via local breeders, and thus they need to go to a company such as Hunte to procure the animals ordered by local customers.
BurbankNBeyond: If we acknowledge the reality of dogs being euthanized in shelters, and the reality of abuses in puppy mills, what should we, as an American society do to solve this problem?
Ira Lippman: Of course we need to start spaying and neutering our pets. The trend nationwide is a reduction of animal euthanasia due to better public awareness of the need to spay and neuter animals, and eliminate unwanted litters.
We need to force the federal and state governments to enforce laws regulating breeders. Puppy mills need to be put out of business.
BurbankNBeyond: What will happen if the city council determines we should stop the sale of puppies in pet stores?
Ira Lippman: We will adapt. However, this is the United States. Don’t we have the right to have a choice? This is not only a matter of protecting the interest of animals, they (city council) are also making a decision protecting the rights of the citizens of Burbank.
The Burbank City Council is planning to discuss the pet store issue at an upcoming city council meeting. The issue is to consider enacting a law or ordinance such as recently enacted in Glendale (Ordinance #5748) which states “no pet store shall display, sell, deliver, offer for sale, barter, auction, give away, or otherwise transfer or dispose of dogs or cats in the City of Glendale on or after the effective date of this Chapter.”
BurbankNBeyond encourages a healthy, open debate on the issue, and for citizens and residents to contact their city council members to inform them of your position, concerns, or recommendations prior to making an decision on the issue of preventing puppy sales in Burbank.
You can contact all Burbank City Council members by email at CityCouncil@ci.burbank.ca.us
Previous articles in this series:
- Burbank Takes on Puppy Mills – An Animal Rights Perspective
- Burbank Takes on Puppy Mills – Part 1
John Savageau welcomes comments from readers. Please send your comments to jsavageau@burbanknbeyond.com.
Editor’s Note: This is part two in a series looking at the controversial topic of “Puppy Mills” and the attempt to ban the sale of the animals in Burbank, which will be taken up by the City Council possibly in late January. Originally published by author in BurbankNBeyond.
In January the City of Burbank will again engage in discussion on whether or not to follow 12 other California cities, including Glendale, Hermosa Beach, Irvine, Los Angeles, and others in both LA and Orange Counties, in banning the sale of pets in retail businesses, including pet shops.
The question many ask is simply, “why?”
There is no simple answer. However contributing justification includes:
- Alleged sadistic treatment of breeding animals and litters at commercial breeders – primarily in mid-western states, through the logistics process delivering animals to retail pet stores
- High number of available rescue dogs, either abandoned or surrendered to an animal shelter or rescue, and subsequent need to euthanize animals which can no longer be housed at shelters due to excessive numbers
- Danger of “in-breeding” by incompetent or unethical breeders
- Obsolete laws and ordinances protecting the safety and welfare of animals
Part 2 of the series “Burbank Takes on Puppy Mills” will focus on the position of animal rights groups, shelters, and adoption agencies and their views on the above topics. Future articles in the series will try to dig further into the perspectives of pet shop owners, and city council members preparing to weigh in on the issue.
“A pet store that closes its doors is a lost opportunity for shelter animals.” (Elizabeth Oreck)
According to the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) a puppy mill is a ”large-scale commercial dog breeding operation that places profit over the well-being of its dogs—who are often severely neglected—and acts without regard to responsible breeding practices.”
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) states there are an estimated 10,000 puppy mills in America, producing more than 2,000,000 puppies for distribution throughout the United States. USUS also notes there are up to 3,000,000 animals euthanized at shelters annually.
No-Kill Los Angeles, an initiative of the Best Friends Animal Society, states 56,121 animals entered LA city shelters in 2011. More than 17,000 of those animals were euthanized.
Horrible numbers. Nobody wants to see or think about such a waste of life, and the thought a family pet could come to such an end. This is the reason animal rights groups such as Burbank CROPS (Citizens for Rescue-Only Pet Stores) and the Best Friends Animal Society are engaged not only in trying to save the lives of animals, but also in preventing the cruelty inflicted on both breeding stock and puppies (this article will focus on puppies, however the same issue applies to cats, birds, and other animals as well).
The Real Problem
Animal right groups, such as Burbank CROPS, do not want to shut down pet stores, as Shelly Rizzotti, Burbank CROPS member explains, they simply want to prevent pet stores from selling or distributing commercially bred “puppy mill” dogs.
No group has an objection to people buying pure bred puppies – from responsible hobby breeders or individuals. According to Elizabeth Oreck, National Manager of Puppy Mill Initiatives for the Best Friends Animal Society, those sources will normally screen and vet prospective buyers or adopters prior to allowing an animal to join the adopting family.
Responsible breeders will follow a code of ethics, which includes a very detailed set of guidelines for breeding animals. There are representative specific breeds ranging from the Mountain Dog Association, German Shepard Dog Club, Great Dane Club of America, Golden Retriever Club of America, to the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America and all breeds in between. A standard clause in all the codes of ethics includes a statement similar to:
Breeders shall not knowingly sell to dog wholesalers, retailers or pet stores, known or suspected puppy mills, or commercial breeders. Breeders shall not donate dogs or puppies as prizes nor knowingly allow any dogs of their breeding to fall into public trust. All advertisement of puppies and dogs, written or oral shall be factual and as forthright and honest as possible in both substance and implication. (Mountain Dog Association).
Anne Gaffney, owner of Burbank’s Pet Haven, goes even further. She notes that “with all the rescue animals available, people should give those animals the first chance.“ Gaffney continued ”adopting a pet is all about the connection. You cannot buy a connection, and it is possible the connection between you and a pet may have nothing to do with the breed.”
Laws Regulating Commercial Breeders
There are many laws and codes regulating commercial breeders, including federal, state, and local. At the top of the regulatory structure is the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which dates back to 1966. The US Department of Agriculture website states the AWA regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) requires that minimum standards of care and treatment be provided for certain animals bred for commercial sale, used in research, transported commercially, or exhibited to the public.
California has additional regulations including the Pet Store Animal Care Act, Pet Protection Act, Breeder Warranty Act, and according to a City of Burbank Study dated 16 October 2012, more than 50 other laws dealing with mistreatment of animals.
The Burbank Municipal Code, Title 5, Article 14 (Pet Shops), provides very specific guidelines on how pet shops must care for animals. Officers from the Burbank Animal Shelter do perform periodic inspections, and according to Brenda Castaneda, Burbank Animal Shelter Superintendent, will cite violators for offenses.
An existing loophole in the regulatory environment surrounds the sale of puppies over the Internet. This issue is being addressed by both congress and the senate at the federal level (HR835/S707), however the issue has not yet been solved, and as of today there is little or no regulation on the sale of commercially bred puppies over the Internet.
It should be noted that animal shelters and rescues are not required to comply with all laws and codes which regulate pet shops and commercial breeders, although all shelters are subject to inspection to ensure the health and safety of resident animals.
The Road Puppies Travel to Burbank Pet Stores
Puppies finding their way to pet stores will normally be bred in a commercial environment in the mid-west, primarily in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, or surprisingly Amish communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Puppies are delivered at around 6~7 weeks old by the breeder to a distribution or logistics company, such as the Hunte Company, based in Goodman, Missouri.
Hunte collects animals in their Missouri facility during the course of a week, during which time there will be health screening and matching pet shop demand with available stock. A truck loaded with puppies will then head out across the country, delivering puppies to pet stores, including those in California.
The trip can take several days, during which time the puppies remain in cages, being fed and checked by delivery staff along the route.
A company such as Hunte will deliver an order to a pet shop, and the pet owner will inspect the animals, and either accept or reject the animal at the point of delivery. If the pet passes arrival inspection, the pet store will settle with the delivery company, and then process the animal locally, sometimes passing through a veterinarian on the way to display in the store.
By the time a puppy hits the display cage, it is normally around 8 weeks old, having been away from its mother for about 2 weeks.
According to Christy Shilling, a CROPS member, the issue is “black and white.” Shilling continued “This is about factory farming of mill animals. Those terms are synonymous, of puppy mills, of puppy farms mass-producing animals. It is cruel, and they do have violations. That’s what we’d like to stop. It’s not about attacking one store, but it is about attacking the mills.”
The goal of CROPS is to educate the public, and ultimately of course to stop the practice of puppy mills and retail sales of mill animals altogether.
A Model for the Future
None of the rights groups or individuals interviewed wants to prevent families from adding a pet to their family. Pets have been part of social and family units since the beginning of recorded history, and it is a healthy relationship.
Rizzotti paints a model where pet stores may still provide pets to their customers, as adoption outlets for rescue animals. In most cases the business model for a pet store is not in pushing flesh, but rather in selling pet supplies such as feed, toys, and environments.
Rizzotti explains there are still ample pure bred animals available through rescues, including puppies. As noted, there are breeding clubs and organizations for nearly all types of breeds, all with a strict code of how they raise, handle, and sell puppies.
An example search on the website breeders.net revealed three Yorkshire Terrier breeders within 10 miles of Burbank’s 91501 zip code. One breeder listed, who asked to remain anonymous, has the following splash on the website: Adorable tiny male puppies, AKC, 1st shots, Champion Bloodlines, great personalities available to good homes. No Agents, No Pet Shops, & No Brokers, NO SHIPPING.
In a phone conversation with the breeder she passionately explained that her dogs only were only available to buyers she personally screened, and the transfer required a list of steps, including full papers, shot record, visit to a veterinarian prior to accepting the puppy. The breeder is a member of the American Kennel Club (AKC), and claims complete adherence to AKC
The American Kennel Club has an investigations and inspections program to both ensure the health and safety of animals within member kennels, as well as checking paperwork for compliance with club standards. Field agents may also conduct DNA testing on dogs to verify the pedigree and parentage of puppies.
While the AKC inspection process has no penal or regulatory authority, if a kennel or breeder has major deficiencies during an inspection, they may lose their membership in the AKC, be fined, or in a worst case the AKC may contact law enforcement to ensure the animals are protected.
What Do Animal Rights Groups Want from Burbank?
Rizzotti is very clear about the objectives Burbank CROPS wishes to accomplish in the upcoming Burbank City Council discussion on pet stores and puppy mills. That is to support elimination of puppy mills, and prevent pet stores from selling commercially bred animals originating in puppy mills.
Part 3 of this series will explore the perspective of pet store owners selling puppies, and others who do not support the position of animal rights groups on the topics of commercial breeding and pet store sales.
BurbankNBeyond and Pacific-Tier Communications would like to hear from all readers on the topic, regardless of your position. Please send your comments to savageau@pacific-tier.com
Throughout 2012 large organizations and governments around the world continued to struggle with the idea of consolidating inefficient data centers, server closets, and individual “rogue” servers scattered around their enterprise or government agencies. Issues dealt with the cost of operating data centers, disaster management of information technology resources, and of course human factors centered on control, power, or retention of jobs in a rapidly evolving IT industry.
Cloud computing and virtualization continue to have an impact on all consolidation discussions, not only from the standpoint of providing a much better model for managing physical assets, but also in the potential cloud offers to solve disaster recovery shortfalls, improve standardization, and encourage or enable development of service-oriented architectures.
Our involvement in projects ranging from local, state, and national government levels in both the United States and other countries indicates a consistent need for answering the following concerns:
- Existing IT infrastructure, including both IT and facility, is reaching the end of its operational life
- Collaboration requirements between internal and external users are expanding quickly, driving an architectural need for interoperability
- Decision support systems require access to both raw data, and “big data/archival data”
We would like to see an effort within the IT community to move in the following directions:
- Real effort at decommissioning and eliminating inefficient data centers
- All data and applications should be fit into an enterprise architecture framework – regardless of the size of organization or data
- Aggressive development of standards supporting interoperability, portability, and reuse of objects and data
Regardless of the very public failures experienced by cloud service providers over the past year, the reality is cloud computing as an IT architecture and model is gaining traction, and is not likely to go away any time soon. As with any emerging service or technology, cloud services will continue to develop and mature, reducing the impact and frequency of failures.
Why would an organization continue to buy individual high powered workstations, individual software licenses, and device-bound storage when the same application can be delivered to a simple display, or wide variety of displays, with standardized web-enabled cloud (SaaS) applications that store mission critical data images on a secure storage system at a secure site? Why not facilitate the transition from CAPEX to OPEX, license to subscription, infrastructure to product and service development?
In reality, unless an organization is in the hardware or software development business, there is very little technical justification for building and managing a data center. This includes secure facilities supporting military or other sensitive sites.
The cost of building and maintaining a data center, compared with either outsourcing into a commercial colocation site – or virtualizing data, applications, and network access requirements has gained the attention of CFOs and CEOs, requiring IT managers to more explicitly justify the cost of building internal infrastructure vs. outsourcing. This is quickly becoming a very difficult task.
Money spent on a data center infrastructure is lost to the organization. The cost of labor is high, the cost of energy, space, and maintenance is high. Mooney that could be better applied to product and service development, customer service capacity, or other revenue and customer-facing activities.
The Bandwidth Factor
The one major limitation the IT community will need to overcome as data center consolidation continues and cloud services become the ‘norm, is bandwidth. Applications, such as streaming video, unified communications, and data intensive applications will need more bandwidth. The telecom companies are making progress, having deployed 100gbps backbone capacity in many markets. However this capacity will need to continue growing quickly to meet the needs of organizations needing to access data and applications stored or hosted within a virtual or cloud computing environment.
Consider a national government’s IT requirements. If the government, like most, are based within a metro area. The agencies and departments consolidate their individual data centers and server closets into a central or reduced number of facilities. Government interoperability frameworks begin to make small steps allowing cross-agency data sharing, and individual users need access to a variety of applications and data sources needed to fulfill their decision support requirements.
For example, a GIS (Geospatial/Geographic Information System) with multiple demographic or other overlays. Individual users will need to display data that may be drawn from several data sources, through GIS applications, and display a large amount of complex data on individual display screens. Without broadband access between both the user and application, as well as application and data sources, the result will be a very poor user experience.
Another example is using the capabilities of video conferencing, desktop sharing, and interactive persistent-state application sharing. Without adequate bandwidth this is simply not possible.
Revisiting the “4th Utility” for 2013
The final vision on the 2013 “wishlist” is that we, as an IT industry, continue to acknowledge the need for developing the 4th Utility. This is the idea that broadband communications, processing capacity (including SaaS applications), and storage is the right of all citizens. Much like the first three utilities, roads, water, and electricity, the 4th Utility must be a basic part of all discussions related to national, state, or local infrastructure discussions. As we move into the next millennium, Internet-enabled, or something like Internet-enabled communications will be an essential part of all our lives.
The 4th Utility requires high capacity fiber optic infrastructure and broadband wireless be delivered to any location within the country which supports a community or individual connected to a community. We’ll have to [pay a fee to access the utility (same as other utilities), but it is our right and obligation to deliver the utility.
2013 will be a lot of fun for us in the IT industry. Cloud computing is going to impact everybody – one way or the other. Individual data centers will continue to close. Service-oriented architectures, enterprise architecture, process modeling, and design efficiency will drive a lot of innovation. – We’ll lose some players, gain players, and and we’ll be in a better position at the end of 2013 than today.
