Consumer Physics is all about enabling people to get a better handle on their field, receiving dock or production line. The company offers the SCiO pocket-sized spectrometer, which enables farmers and agricultural organizations to analyze the makeup of the forage that dairy cows are grazing.

In the past there was a dual barrier to really taking action on this data—spectrometers were big and clunky and the data was disconnected from operational systems. But Consumer Physics is closing that loop by making the device smaller and connecting it to a smartphone application and the cloud.

+ Also on Network World: John Deere leads the way with IoT-driven precision farming +

So, given this Internet of Things play, it is particularly interesting to hear that Cargill, a huge multinational in the food, agriculture, financial, and industrial products and services space is partnering with Consumer Physics to deliver a new joint offering: Reveal. Reveal is a real-time forage analysis service that puts the formerly hard to attain Cargill forage lab analysis in the palm of a hand.

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PitchBook is a data company. Its reason for being is to provide a platform that tracks a plethora of different aspects of both private and public markets. Want to know about what’s happening in venture capital, private equity or M&A? Chances are PitchBook can give you the answer. The company is a subsidiary of Morningstar and has offices in Seattle, New York, and London.

But here’s the thing, though. PitchBook was founded in 2007 when cloud computing was pretty much just beginning and there was no real awareness of what it meant. In those days, enterprise IT agility meant leveraging virtualization to gain efficiencies. Now don’t get me wrong, moving from a paradigm of racking and stacking physical servers to being able to spin up virtual servers at will is a big deal, it’s just that since 2007, there has been massive further innovation in the infrastructure space.

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GE has always had technology as a core part of its offering. After all, you don’t build wind turbines, jet engines and gas plants without leveraging technology. But in recent years, the company has moved from being an industrial company that uses technology to an outright vendor of technology solutions.

A core part of this approach is by powering what GE calls the Industrial IoT, that is all the connected devices that are used in industrial settings of every kind. Predix is GE’s platform for the industrial IoT, and it promises to connect machines, data and people to drive results. Predix offers a single platform based in the cloud that can reconcile all the disparate data feeds and information streams pouring out of the industrial IoT.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is a big deal. A really big one.

There are approximately 8 billion connected devices on the market today, collectively accounting for 50 percent of internet traffic. And that is but a taste of the future—the number of devices is anticipated to increase 150 percent in the next three years. And where growth like that is predicted, every man and his dog is keen to grab market share. The security for IoT space is no different.

+ Also on Network World: A lack of IoT security is scaring the heck out of everybody +

There are some justified reasons why security in this new IoT context will be different. Connected devices (e.g., laptops, webcams, HVAC systems, etc.) are designed to connect wirelessly, without corporate oversight or control. This creates a dynamic, ever-expanding matrix of connections that not only boosts employee productivity and business efficiency, but simultaneously flies under the radar of security.

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There are some people whose vision of the future simply defy words. I would put Elon Musk firmly in the category – changing the world through a single initiative isn’t Musk’s style, rather, he wants to deliver his vision of the future across multiple areas. Space travel? Check. Hyper-efficient terrestrial transportation? Also check. Personal automobiles that challenge both existing business and technology models? Check. Solar power with new economics and scale? Also check. While many would question his political leanings, there is no denying that Musk is a genius.

I’ve never met Musk, but watching him speak it is obvious that this is one visionary who not only sees a “bigger picture” for the future of humanity, but he also deeply understands the technology constraints and opportunities that will deliver the future. Which is an inspiring thing to watch, but which also places huge challenges upon the individuals who need to deliver that work. By extension, it also pushes the boundaries of what existing technologies can do.

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Recently development and DevOps vendor XebiaLabs reached out to me to see if I’d be keen to talk to one of their customers. XebiaLabs wanted to point out that while they are totally amped on their own products and believe they do awesome things for their customers, the best proof of that is to talk to a real life customer and assess the benefits directly from the horse’s mouth as it where.

That sounded like a logical proposition to me, and after a concerted effort by their PR agency to get me to agree to a call (because I’m a little bit busy, and a little bit lazy), I sat down with Paychex's Dave Wilson, director of infrastructure, and Mick Whittemore, vice president of IT, to talk about what XebiaLabs helped them achieve.

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In the early days of the cloud, a decade or so ago, the conversations were generally parsed in terms of it being a zero-sum game. Either the cloud would win or on-premises would. Either public cloud would crush private cloud or the other way round. And if the public cloud were to win, then it would be a fight to the death between Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

But we’ve all gotten a little more nuanced since then, and most people accept that some kind of hybrid offering will likely be the default for the vast majority of organizations into the future. With a few exception, most organizations will take a little bit of this, add it to a little bit of that, and throw in some of that stuff for good measure.

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I live my life in two worlds. The most visible world, at least to this audience, involves spending lots of time in Silicon Valley and the U.S. generally and conversing with the technology illuminati—those who “get” technology, the cloud and what it can offer the world.

In my other life, I live in a small (like, tiny) rural village in deepest, darkest New Zealand. I’m surrounded by fine folk, the so-called “salt of the earth” who make a living from the land, sheep, grapes and the rural sector generally. To these folks, technology is simply another tool to add to the arsenal of tools they have at their disposal.

+ Also on Network World: Deep dive on AWS vs. Azure vs. Google cloud storage options +

For these people, cloud isn’t always an already-adopted opportunity. Rather they use a variety of technology products and services. I have a friend who runs an agricultural service business whose operational software is a DOS-based solution. While this may have friends in the technology world rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, it is the reality of the “real world.” As an aside, I’ve said for the longest time that technology companies should spend lots of time away from the usual early-adopter suspects to better understand the real user stories and needs of their customers.

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The security space is one area where there are a massive number of vendors all offering to solve particular discrete problems. That is all well and good if you have a singular, discrete problem to solve, but what happens if you’re looking for a solution that covers the totality of your needs?

Signal Science wants to be the answer to that question, the company offers a web protection product that covers cloud, physical and containerized infrastructure and provides security prioritization based on where applications are targeted. Signal Sciences claims Under Armour, Etsy, Yelp and Shutterstock as customers.

+ Also on Network World: What to ask when selecting application security solutions +

The company is making a dual announcement today. The first about its platform overall; the second is some fundraising news. Since fundraising is often seen as a validation of the product story, I’ll cover off the money side of things first. Signal Sciences has raised a $15 million Series B funding round led by Charles River Ventures.

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