Friday Five — August 28, 2015

Red Hat announced that it has once again been named to Forbes' list of the "World's Most Innovative Companies." Red Hat was ranked at 26 on the list, which recognizes a total of 100 companies from around the world. It is the third time Red Hat has been honored by Forbes. The list of the World's Most Innovative Companies is compiled using "...investors' ability to identify firms they expect to be innovative now and in the future."

The internet of things (IoT) is not a theory anymore. It is happening today and it is changing how businesses function... "Successful IoT projects are inextricably linked with positive business outcomes. It requires a lot of organisational change to effectively align the two and this has to be managed at the C-suite level as a lot of processes and practices will need to be adapted. The reason C-suite executives are best placed to oversee these transformations and how they can help the business as a whole is because they have visibility of the whole company." CBR lists five main things CEOs need to consider when adopting an IoT strategy...

See how Red Hat Consulting and Cisco provide innovative OpenStack solutions for public sector customers.

Because Red Hat sprang from the world of open source software ‐ a community whose members pride themselves on delivering open and honest feedback ‐ having candid, and what others might call difficult, conversations is the norm. We debate, we argue, and we complain. We let the sparks fly. The benefits of operating this way are immense because we are able to tackle the elephant in the room head on, but this kind of culture is hard to build and maintain, especially as companies grow... We've found that there are three key things you need to tackle to get your feedback loop spinning; this is the foundational work that gets everyone pushing in the same direction and that creates a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable having difficult conversations. As a leader, you must role model these behaviors, and encourage them at every level of your organization: 1. Show appreciation. 2. Open up. 3. Be inclusive early and often. –Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Red Hat

Distributed IoT solutions create large-scale security challenges, since the systems are networked over the Internet and use processing capacity and storage resources from the cloud. That's why companies need to expand their security infrastructure to efficiently protect themselves from data loss, theft and ever more sophisticated denial-of-service attacks. This infrastructure includes comprehensive authentication, authorizing and auditing features. These build confidence, regulate access to resources and ensure compliance with the legal guidelines and company policies. Companies should use powerful encryption methods in order to protect their intellectual property and customer data from theft.